This correlates with my initial impressions of .Net, but I have since changed my view and see .Net as a significant technological step forward! Yada, yada, yada... seriously though you should check out Don Box's MSDN articles "House of COM: Is COM dead?" for background into the deprecation of the significance of IDL.
A concern that I do share with you is that the .net architecture is not as obviously interface focused as COM was, consequently new developers who have not been exposed to the COM/interface paradigm will no longer be forced to deal with and come to appreciate the value of interfaces. But this is where the more mature, I'm 40+ ;), developer gets an opportunity to leverage their experience. We probably also need to acknowledge that COM also caused it's fair share of grief wrt version control (a key aspect of interfaces) and I believe that Microsoft is trying a radically new tack with the GAC and side by side execution to tackle this. The success of which will probably be measured by the pain enterprises experience when rolling out and subsequently upgrading their .Net implementations. regards -----Original Message----- From: Moderated discussion of advanced .NET topics. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Julian Everett Sent: 15 December 2003 18:02 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ADVANCED-DOTNET] .NET, XML serialisation and encapsulation (was: Web Service Desig n Question) Something about the whole notion of XML serialisation of objects in relation to web services has been niggling at me recently - then in a moment of nostalgia last week I was browsing DB's Essential COM and suddenly I realised what it was. "The first rule of COM is separation of interface from implementation" - wise words indeed, but what the heck happened in .NET especially in relation to web services!? Shouldn't WSDL play the same central role in web services design that IDL played in COM? Instead however, with VS.NET we have the "VB approach" where IDL/WSDL is dynamically generated at compile time, tightly coupled to the particular details of the service implementation. For this reason, I try to use XML serialisation only for GoF Value object-type containers that have nothing to do with my service implementation details. Moreover, to me at least the first thing I think of when someone says object serialisation/deserialisation is remoting - something I don't like as obviously web services have nothing to do with remoting. Rather, I try to think in terms of "service serialisation", i.e. describing data structures that encapsulate abstracted entry points into the set of interacting objects that comprise my service. Indeed, perhaps it's me but rejecting "the first rule of COM" seems to be a common theme throughout the .NET base libraries. I always thought that compared to Java, a massive strength of MS's component model was that it was built upon the principle of class factories that return interface references - something Java only caught on to after the pain of deprecating earlier APIs, with the introduction of frameworks like the Collections API. As I understand it, IDL was introduced primarily to address language interop issues (something that is obviously not relevant with .NET) rather than to promote abstraction, however I can't help feeling that Microsoft took a step backwards when they decided against a interface-based architecture in their implementation of the CLR... Any thoughts? regards Julian -----Original Message----- From: Martijn de Haas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 11 December 2003 11:38 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [ADVANCED-DOTNET] Web Service Design Question Instead of using a string as argument for you methods, why don't you create classes that represents XML structure. Read about XML serialization for this matter (MSISDN, index item: XML serialization) =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor� http://www.develop.com Some .NET courses you may be interested in: NEW! Guerrilla ASP.NET, 26 Jan 2004, in Los Angeles http://www.develop.com/courses/gaspdotnetls View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Control Centre. For further information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp IMPORTANT NOTICE This communication contains information, which is confidential and may also be privileged. It is for the exclusive use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s) please note that any form of distribution, copying or use of this communication or the information in it is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error please return it to the sender. The opinions expressed within this communication are not necessarily those expressed by Teletext Ltd. Teletext Ltd. 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