Re: OO / fe-be protocol

> Ok, I'll go back to reading about Corba and see if I can figure out if
> it can do the job.

It can, and it is appropriate.

The devil is in the details, which include concerns on portability of
the ORB among our > 20 platforms, additional levels of complexity for
the minimum, small installation (Naming Service, etc etc), and general
unfamiliarity with CORBA. I'm sure there are other concerns too.

I've got some experience with C++ ORBs (TAO and Mico), but am not
familiar with the C mapping and how clean it may or may not be.

The "transform only if necessary" philosophy of CORBA (that is,
recipients are responsible for changing byte order if required, but do
not if not) should minimize overhead. And the support for dynamic data
definition and data handling should be a real winner, at least for
communications to outside the server. Inside the server it could help
us clean up our interfaces, and start thinking about distributing
portions onto multiple platforms. Should be fun :)
                     - Thomas

-- 
Thomas Lockhart                lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu
South Pasadena, California