"Mark Woyna" <woyna@a...> wrote in message
news:81158393.0406021410.470b0d66@p......
> Gerald Brose <gerald.brose@x...> wrote in message
news:<2i5gvaFhvjq7U1@u...>...
> >
> > For loosely coupled application-to-application communication
> > that cannot rely on a homogeneous middleware layer such as
> > CORBA and may need to be rearranged to integrate more systems
> > every other month, you will be better off with Web Services.
>
> What is Web Services if not the next attempt at a homogeneous
> middleware layer???
>

The web services spec is homogenous, but the two ends of the wire need not
be the same type of middleware (as is required in the case of RMI, for
example).  However, as mentioned, CORBA is not tied to any single language,
but, if I'm not mistaken, the languages need to be object-oriented.

> CORBA was to be *the* standard for heterogeneous distributed
> computing. Since one important company, read: Microsoft, did not buy
> off on the vision of a heterogeneous computing environment, the world
> was left with two major platforms: CORBA and COM/DCOM/COM+/etc, and a
> collection of proprietary MOM products. The fear that Sun would
> succeed in using Java to provide a uniform distributed platform led
> Microsoft to push for a cross-language, cross-platform solution, i.e.
> SOAP and Web Services. This does not change the fact that there was a
> standard open model for distributed computing.
>
> > XML messages are especially suited for document-style inter-
> > actions, and the performance hit is tolerable in many of
> > these applications. People also tend to believe that the
> > firewall-friendliness of HTTP is a good thing...
>
> Yes, believe. Like kids believe in Santa Claus. They'll believe until
> some of their customers private data goes walking out port 80, and
> then we'll see those ports closing up.
>

Agreed.  It seems like people are still thinking in terms of the days when
most web sites simply served up static html.



l8r, Mike N. Christoff