Re: Ideas for Ada 200X (Ada.Sockets)

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Tarjei T. Jensen wrote:
> Robert A Duff  wrote:
...
> One could also add a layer to the socket library in order to simplify socket
> programming for ordinary mortals. e.g. add a tcp client and server library.
> This is not supposed to be something fancy; just something that hides the
> ugly stuff and works reasonably well and with no surprises.
> 
> How simple should such a library be? Just four procedures: open_tcp_client,
> open_tcp_server, read_tcp, write_tcp. That's it. The latter should ideally
> be just aliases for more general read and write procedures/functions.

In fairness, there is more to sockets than just that. Consider:

- What about UNIX sockets?
- On UNIX sockets:
    - what about sending/receiving user credentials?
    - what about sending/receiving open file descriptors?
    - what about other out-of-band data?
- What are the name services APIs provided?
- How are name services choices and errors handled?
- Do you support Ada streams on the socket(s)?
- Are Ada streams buffered for better performance (note earlier threads
   about the abysmal performance of some T'Write() operations).
- Does Ada streams I/O convert to endian neutral network formats
   (a la XDR routines for RPC?)
- What about UDP and lower level IP services?
- What about raw socket services?
- What about authentication?  SSL? Kerberos?  <This is a biggy>

I am not saying it shouldn't be done, but I think you've overly
trivialized it. 8-)

I think most people would settle for a good TCP
level API for applications. But this would need to include naming
services at a minimum, and ideally Ada streams with
endian neutral I/O to be truly useful.

It would also be useful for Ada0X to include some extensions to the
distributed annex to consider standard ways to authenticate. This is
perhaps one of the biggest thorn patches for distributed computing in
hostile environments. I would love to see SSL (perhaps) as a builtin
selectable option for the channel filter for example.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg