[e-lang] [RFP] cross-language object serialization (E <---> Squeak-E)

Tyler Close tyler at waterken.com
Tue Jan 21 13:45:08 UTC 2003


On Monday 20 January 2003 22:33, Mark S. Miller wrote:
> But in any case, based on the current state of the discussion, I think the
> last non-WOS contender has been eliminated. Until and unless a surprising
> problem shows up, I'm willing to declare that the next CapTP will use WOS
> as its serialization format, in both its doc-code-binary and its
> XML-textual forms. Given this, I think that CapTP, like WOMP, should use
> Doc to define its message layer as well. A CapTP connection should start in
> Doc-XML-text mode, and we need to define some textual negotiation for
> switching to doc-code binary format.

Yay!

> How does WOMP deal with this format negotiation issue?

It doesn't. This issue would be handled by the particular network
protocol binding. The only currently defined binding of the WOMP
is to HTTP, which uses MIME style content-type negotiation. There
is no switching mid-message in HTTP.

I'll give it some thought.

My first thought is that you could do something similar to HTTP.
One side of a connection is a stream of nodes. You start out
sending nodes in XML.  On the receiving side of the connection,
you receive a node indicating that the other side understands
doc-code.  You send a node indicating that the stream is switching
to doc-code. You start sending nodes in doc-code.  This way, one
syntax is not embedded within another.

Tyler



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