Smalltalk and CORBA

Markus Kohler markus_kohler at bbn.hp.com
Thu Dec 10 12:54:48 UTC 1998


Peter Smet wrote:
> 
[snip]
> 
> Because CORBA is location transparent, it should be possible to replace all
> bridges to C, C++, DLLs etc and use CORBA to dispatch all calls to code
> outside the VM - Even if the code is on the same machine. A big problem for
> CORBA is how to pass objects by value (how can you guarantee that a method
> can be implemented on the receiving machine?). 

The latest CORBA standard supports pass by value.
I don't know how it works nor do I know if any CORBA implementation
already supports it. 

> Smalltalk and Java should go
> a long way towards solving this problem with the VM.

Java's RMI solves the pass by value problem. It also solves the problem
of automatically loading 
missing classes. 

> 
> I think a free Smalltalk CORBA implementation would be of great benefit for
> the Smalltalk community. 

I would like it too :-)

> The days of standalone programs running
> sequentially are numbered. I know PARC have something called ILU - but I
> don't know too much about it. I don't think it is a full CORBA 2.0
> implementation. It is probably worth checking to see if it could act as a
> squeak ORB. The big downside to using ORBS is that your programming must use
> 'typing' again (remember that word). 

Not necessarily.
Corba also defines a dynamic invocation interface (DII), which is 
hard to use from statically typed languages like C++ but could be used
easily from Smalltalk. 
It's probably a bit slower than doing statically typed calls, but it
would be very easy to use. 

One may have a look at CorbaScript
(http://corbaweb.lifl.fr/CorbaScript/) to see what I mean. 

I think squeak could do it better :-]

> This is a pain, to say the least.
> Having just been introduced to Haskell, I love the way this language uses
> type inference - Dan Ingalls once made the comment that if Squeak looked at
> its own belly button long enough it would be nice if it could determine all
> the types in the system....
> 
> Just some ideas...
> 
> Peter



Markus
-- 
Markus Kohler  mailto:markus_kohler at hp.com





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