Re: Distributed system portability

[Thierry Lelegard <thierry.lelegard@canal-plus.fr>]

> Is it generally the case that a distributed system compiled on two
> different architectures can talk to itself? In other words, if I write a
> distributed system with GNAT, and I compile one portion on Windows and
> another portion on Linux, are these two systems likely to talk to each
> other? If not, are the stream formats likely to be compatible? If not,
> is there a way to redefine the low-level stream operators for things
> like Integer to ensure that the same format is used at both ends? Or do
> I need to write translation routines to some architecture-independent
> format?

In pratice, GNAT/GLADE seems to handle this (but I never used it).

In theory (although there is no other implementation of DSA than GLADE),
there is absolutely no guarantee in the ARM about that. Interoperability
is, in my opinion, the biggest hole in Ada95 and writing "open" software
in Ada95 is much harder that it could have been if the default representation
of streams were standardized.

-Thierry
____________________________________________________________________________

Thierry Lelegard, "The Jazzing Troll", Email: thierry.lelegard@canal-plus.fr
CANAL+ Technologies, 34 place Raoul Dautry, 75906 Paris Cedex 15, France
Tel: +33 1 71 71 54 30   Fax: +33 1 71 71 52 08   Mobile: +33 6 03 00 65 75
____________________________________________________________________________