Re: Ada communicating with other programs

["Mark Lundquist" <up.yerz@nospam.com>]

"Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@SpamCop.net> wrote in message
news:HAgg6Fearv8I@eisner.encompasserve.org...
> In article <3BFA5654.519D8BC8@kfunigraz.ac.at>, Siegfried Gonzi
<siegfried.gonzi@kfunigraz.ac.at> writes:
> > Actually I am learning a little bit Ada 95, therefore a few questions:
> >
> > a) Is it hard for Ada to communicate with other programs?
>
> Ada has an optional appendix to cover distributed programming
> between multiple processes running in Ada, but anything more
> general (to communicate with programs in other languages)
> requires direct use of operating system features.

Well...

1) Just to clarify, Ada has very good capabilities for interfacing with
*object code* written in other languages, and this of course has nothing to
do with direct use of OS features as long as we are talking about statically
linked executables (and even with shared libraries on Unix, interoperability
typically does not involve OS features at the source code level unless you
have special needs -- in which case you would have to jump through the same
hoops no matter what language you are programming in).

2) See David Botton's GNATCOM package for COM support for Ada on Wind*ws
(www.adapower.com/gnatcom).

3) CORBA implementations are available that work with Ada:
        www.ois.com
        www.topgraphx.com

-- mark