Exposing COM via XML-RPC or Something Else

[William Tanksley]

On Sat, 4 Dec 1999 16:18:45 -0500, Gordon McMillan wrote:
>Bernhard Reiter wrote:

>> >CORBA is NOT a component standard -- it's an interoperability
>> >standard.
>> Well AFAI understand it COM also is an interoperability standard,
>> but I might just miss the point here.

>"COM" is many (too many) things. At it's core, though, COM 
>is a C++ vtable exposed to C. In that sense it is a binary 
>standard, and very simple.

>COM development followed two conflicting tracks. The C/C++ 
>folks followed one track, and the VB folks took another. The 
>VB stuff is complex (because the VB folks took all kinds of 
>shortcuts based on VB internals). It's also what caught on 
>(IDispatch, Automation, the stuff the Python's COM 
>extensions do so well). The equivalent CORBA stuff (dynamic 
>discovery) is probably better architected, but nowhere near as 
>widely used. The part of CORBA that is widely used is 
>actually much more straightforward in COM.

I've still got some room to convince my friend to use something aside from
COM, and I'd like to cheat by asking you for the answers, since you sound
knowledgable.  Would you recommend COM over CORBA for a low-level object
system?

>> I do not habe much experience about it, I admit, but technically
>> they also seem to have the same complexity. I just do not believe
>> that COM is easier to code. Well this is, what the articles
>> support, too.

>It all depends on what you're doing and what tools you use.

Mainly assembler right now; we'll be using C to implement the object
system and most of its components, but also some assembly.

>CORBA was a full blown spec in 89, but didn't have any 
>implementations until 95 or so. COM was working in 90, but if 
>it ever had a full blown spec, I must've missed it.

COM's had a full ISO spec for quite some time.  MSFT gives it away on its
website.  My friend is quite impressed with it, and he's normally a pretty
rabid MS hater.

>- Gordon

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley, in hoc signo hack