From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,af2e7a78c5c6e7c4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-03-10 07:37:03 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsmm00.sul.t-online.com!t-online.de!news.t-online.com!not-for-mail From: Ingo Marks Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: JGnat support. was NetBeans and ADA?(Co-opt Java?) Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 16:34:35 +0100 Organization: T-Online Message-ID: References: <3C8A2F63.E18B24D0@despammed.com> <3C8B53C6.BB216245@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: news.t-online.com 1015774454 00 30303 RXjwTfAXS+Y9Jk 020310 15:34:14 X-Complaints-To: abuse@t-online.com X-Sender: 340020534592-0001@t-dialin.net User-Agent: KNode/0.6.1 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:21021 Date: 2002-03-10T16:34:35+01:00 List-Id: Marc A. Criley wrote: > Wes Groleau wrote: >> >> > However, perhaps one could swipe the Java idea entirely and create an >> > Ada bytecode compiler with Java support, .... >> > >> > We already have the GNAT runtime libraries. Perhaps that would be a >> > good place to start. .... >> >> If I understand you right, you mean an environment >> where there would be an "Ada Virtual Machine (AVM)" >> consisting mainly of the run-time libraries and a >> byte-code interpreter, and a byte-code that includes >> primitives for the Ada concurrency features? >> >> Interesting idea. > > I think that's one fork to take, another, though, is simply having a > rich set of "standardized", portable, and consistent utility packages > ready to go--comparable to the JDK. > > Marc A. Criley > Consultant > Quadrus Corporation > www.quadruscorp.com I don't think it's a clever idea just to imitate the JDK. An Ada based solution must provide far better features than J2EE and .NET to make Ada attractive to developers. The current big problems Java and .NET suffer is performance. We all know that Java is pretty slow compared to C++ and Ada. AFAIK Microsoft has the same problem with .NET. Here it's not the C# compiler (they have a good JIT compiler for it) but the very slow XML based webservices. In one computer journal MS recently recommended NOT to use .NET based webservices. XML is based on top of HTTP and that on TCPIP, so there is much overhead. Ada provides good networking and tasking capabilities. There exist an Ada based webserver (AWS) which you can compile your own Ada applications into, so that you don't have CGI overhead and compilation overhead (as PHP, Perl, MSIL etc. suffer). With Adas tasking capabilities it should be possible to write network "task" based web applications instead of page (session) based like CGI. Currently you have the choice to use CGI (with C, C++ etc.) or script based server modules (mod_php, mod_perl for Apache, for example). They are all "paged based", that means they must use sessions to recover all user data between page hits (for Java there exists another event based solution). My idea is, that in Ada you could use tasks instead of sessions or events. For every user a "session task" would be started which surveys the user's actions and handle his requests. That way, even realtime behaviour would be possible with Ada based web applications. I haven't heard about any realtime features in Java oder .NET so far. Because Ada has standardized compilers (GNAT) for many platforms (Windows, Linux, BSD, MacOSX, Sun etc.), AWS could run on several platforms and make binary data exchange between different AWS possible. I have played a little bit with AWS, it seems not to be pretty stable yet, but it could be enhanced. The advantages of Ada based web applications are evident: - webserver integrated Ada applications (no CGI overhead, no compilation overhead) - binary data transfer between different AWS platforms (no XML overhead) - session tasks survey user actions and allow proper actions within given time restrictions - better security (due to Ada features (no buffer overflows etc.)) could result to more powerful and much faster solutions than both J2EE and.NET. Ingo