Re: GNAT, LINUX, KDE

["Vladimir Olensky" <vladimir_olensky@yahoo.com>]

Tarjei Jensen wrote in message <81lkb2$mra3@ftp.kvaerner.com>...
>
>Vladimir Olensky wrote:

>>  If similar communication subsystem would be a part of a standard
>>or semi-standard Ada environment  it could provide an excellent
>>platform  for many great things and make Ada more competitive
>>in some areas where C++ has better positions.

>You're not the only one who think along those lines.


That's very nice :-)

>>Importance of communications increases every year.

>True.
>I think network programming is a field where Ada could do really well if
the
>right examples existed and this theme were used by educators.


You may find them in CLAW from RR Software.

Actually I was talking not only about network programming  but
about communications in a more broader sense where this
particular aspect is the only some fraction  of the whole.

I see such subsystem consisting of several layers where the lowest
layers provide thread safe OO wrappers  to all the communications
capabilities  of the underlying OS including serial/parallel communications,
mailslots, named pipes, memory mapped files, sockets etc.
The upper layer uses all that  to build higher level services including
different data streams, TCP/IP services such as HTTP, FTP, TFTP,
SNMP, NTTP, Telnet  etc.
User can have access to the services at the needed level and combine
them to create what is needed for particular application.

I like the way the network  services are  done in Java.
Very convenient.
Even Serial/Parallel communication classes are already
available from Sun and are considered now to be part of the
Java standard.

When I first encountered ACE (last year)  I had a nice surprise that
everything I was thinking about had been already implemented using
advanced design patterns technique.
The bad thing about all this that it was C++ and not Ada.

Another nice surprise recently  was Erlang  with its communications
modules.

Regards,
Vladimir Olensky