Hello all,
I recently moved our first Java project from CORBA to XML for all
data communications. But first a little background.
We were tasked to create an distributed (n-tier) application in java
using corba. Nobody in the company had _any_ experience with
either java nor corba. I was given the ball to (quickly) learn java &
corba and give a proof-of-concept. I had a month. Lets just say it
wasn't fun. I'll cut out the gory details, except to say the project
went forward and was deployed. Now the client software ran in
USFed govt agencies that hit our corba server. Approximately 50%
of the sites could access the server. The others couldn't because
of the client sites firewall and proxy server issues. To highlight my
inexperience, I didn't know that you had to set the client up to use
proxy servers!
Anyway, there was _no_ way that we could get the sys admins
from these govt sites to open up a port for IIOP (some were running
stateful inspection firewalls); but everybody could use the web. So
I snapped out the corba layer and snapped in an XML layer. I
designed the comm layer to interfaces (whew!) so all I had to do
was have the XML layer create the objects from the xml
information. On the server side, I wrote a servlet that would take
the POSTS from the client and convert them to what the serve
code was expecting. The client XML comm layer would pass a set
of parameters to the servlet identifying what server object and
method to call. A real hack job, but in 2 weeks it was completely
converted and deployed the following week. Now all those blocked
sites (except one) could access the server.
Now I know _alot_(!) more about java. I have a bad taste in my
mouth over corba - but alot of that is from the stressful environment
I had to "learn" it in. I really enjoyed working in the XML - the XML
libraries are nice.
The problem I have with CORBA (and as I'm just beginning to
examine EJB) are firewalls, firewalls, firewalls. It looks like to me
as long as you control the firewalls where the corba connections
pass, you can have good success. If you don't, your just begging
for problems. With XML the firewalls are barely a hiccup.
> I think XML and Java are a very powerful combination but I do feel very
> uneasy in using in this context. I think if current clients are Java based
> that it would seem a bit unwise to take the performance hit associated with
> sending xml messages considering the current tagging mechanism. I supose you
> could always compress the message but again you are creating a performance
> hit where it is probably unwarranted. Before giving up on Java serialization
> we should come up with reasons for the change.
>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Tom Jenkins DevIS (http://www.devis.com)
python is executable pseudo-code; perl is executable line-noise,
java is, well, java
Way to go Hokies! Great season 11-1 - we're proud of you
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