Re: Distributed Systems Annex, data sharing between programs

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

On 6 Cze, 12:09, Niklas Holsti <niklas.hol...@tidorum.invalid> wrote:

> > This is what makes single-language-distributed-systems solutions kind
> > of pointless.
>
> The fact that *some* distributed systems are multi-language does not
> mean that a single-language solution is pointless. Insufficient, perhaps.

Single-language systems (A) are a subset of multi-language systems
(B). This means that if you need the B solution anyway (and you really
need it) and it solve problem A as well, then having a separate A
solution is pointless.

You might still ask for it for performance reasons (it is easier to
achieve good performance if you are not constrained by artificial
common denominators), but this is a luxury that can be afforded only
when you have other burning problems sorted out already.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for Ada and that is why I argue
that this is an effort that is better spent elsewhere.

> In your experience, are
> IDLs like CORBA used today? Or just sockets with ad-hoc protocols?

I think that plain sockets are not very widely used by mature
development teams and instead some ready protocols are adopted with
varying degrees of completeness. CORBA is complete but huge and it
seems to be less and less popular, but there are plenty of other
solutions somewhere in this spectrum.
One of the small, but potentially useful things I have found recently
is this:

http://msgpack.org/

It is not complete in the sense that it covers only the serialization
part (and even there has many limitations), but for a number of
problems seems like a nice and easy, off-hand solution. Yes, the Ada
binding is missing there.

And of course, I will benefit from the opportunity to shamelessly
mention this:

http://inspirel.com/yami4/

--
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.msobczak.com * http://www.inspirel.com