How good is CORBA?

[Chris Mellon]

On 11/21/06, Nigel Rantor <wiggly at wiggly.org> wrote:
> Sai Krishna M wrote:
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > i have been developing web based applications using python+cheetah.
> >
> > The numbers are increasing. The applications have many common parts of
> > code. Though these applications are separate from each other they are
> > run in the same server.
> >
> > I heard about CORBA... but also heard that it has some flaws...like
> > the programming being very complicated.
> > Also heard that CORBA is no more used these days...
> >
> > Can someone suggest me a better option or is corba fine?
>
> This is an extremely loaded question and you're liable to get many
> differing opinions.
>
> What follows is just my opinion, I don't want to get into any religious
> wars.
>
> CORBA is a large, complex system that allows you to do object-RPC
> efficiently and in many different languages.
>
> Web services are now converging on the same solutions as the OMG did
> with CORBA because they are solving the same problems.
>
> If you need to access someone else's services then web services with
> XML-RPC/SOAP/REST is probably a great idea.
>
> If you have any kind of need for performance, or if all of your
> interfaces are internal then I would choose CORBA.
>
> I am currently building a system with a mixture of CORBA/SOAP interfaces
> because of these trade-offs.
>
> If you don't like CORBA, but want to do efficient object-RPC and don't
> mind paying for it then perhaps look at Ice from www.zeroc.com, they're
> a bunch of good guys who were big CORBA people and decided to go make an
> object-RPC mechanism without the cruft that CORBA gathered.
>

FYI: Ice is available under the GPL, so if by "pay" you mean "pay
money" that's not your only option. You can also get a commercial
license, similiar to Qt.

I like Ice a lot, it's got hardly any of the ramp up time and learning
curve that CORBA does, and it's extremely efficent. If GPL or cash are
acceptable licensing options to you, then I encourage you to use it
before you head to CORBA.

> Despite the fact that some very bad decisions were made about what to
> include in CORBA you don't *have* to use any of the braindead features.
>
> If you have any more specific questions then let me know, this is just
> my quick 0.02c
>
> Regards,
>
>    n
>
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>