Re: Ada Networking (General/Design)

[Marc C <mc.provisional@gmail.com>]

On Monday, August 13, 2012 1:28:22 PM UTC-5, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

> BTW, did you evaluate the distributed systems Annex vs. this stuff? I am
> interested in an opinion, because we are using other technology, so that I
> had no opportunity to evaluate the Annex. Was it too heavy-weight for you?

Essentially the DSA was ruled out because the systems with which I would be communicating are very unlikely to be done in Ada. And, while I could supply an Ada-implemented "client" with Languages-Other-Than-Ada bindings to it, by offering a "native" client that sends, say JSON across ZeroMQ, it removes a source of hesitancy. In fact, just saying "here's a ZeroMQ port, send me a JSON object with these fields (or an XML doc passing this schema)" and let them go off and build it themselves makes the developers happy.  They don't have to depend, then, on *my* API implementation working correctly.

In addition, by employing a standard-ish transport medium--ZeroMQ, AMQP for now--it's much easier to tie in other systems. So long as my system is network-accessible, anyone can get to it--they don't need any client code from me.  This therefore enhances interoperability since I supply the only platform-dependent piece, and whoever talks to me can be running whatever OS/HW platform they want.

Marc