This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: What CORBA got wrong? Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Ted Neward compares the WS* efforts with the older CORBA efforts - and has a few criticisms. Hmm. The more I look at what's happening with WS*, the more I think it looks exactly like what the OMG did with CORBA - a blizzard of specs no one cares about, which tend sto make vendor interop harder and harder. But anyway - I thought this was an interesting thing:

For me, the fatal problem for CORBA was that they also tried to tackle standardizing programming models/language bindings. Ever use CORBA using the C++ language bindings? Yuck. How about in Java - not so good either.

Hmm - there's a standard Smalltalk model as well, and somehow, it's simply not that complex. I'll show you:

Step one - turn on the listener in the DST control panel - make sure to enable I3. Step two - create a small class with a count variable, accessors for that variable, and an "API" method:

initialize
     "set the initial state"
     self count: 0.

add: aNumber
     self count: self count + 1.

Now, modify the #initialize method this way:

initialize
     self counter: 0.
     ORBObject namingService contextReBind: 'counterService' asDSTName to: self.

And add this method to "tear down" the service when you are done

release
     super release.
     ORBObject namingService contextUnBind: 'counterService' asDSTName.

Now, you can set up an instance by executing Counter inspect and leaving the inspector up for examination. Now, start up DST on another system, and execute this in a workspace: ORBObject namingService contextResolve: 'counterService' asDSTName.. That's it - you can now send the remote objects messages, like #add:, write there in the inspector. From there, wrapping a UI on it isn't hard.

Sure, there's exception handling, dealing with dropped connections - but that's no different than network programming has ever been. If you want the demo above to work with non-Smalltalk code, you need to go ahead and generate the appropriate IDL - but again, that happens for you. Seems a wee bit simpler than the complexity you see in Java and C++, eh? CORBA really didn't have to be complex - it just became so in the mainstream languages. Which says more about those languages than it does about CORBA, IMHO. The main reason that WS* is succeeding where CORBA failed? Port 80