On Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:03:56 -0700, Steve Bankes wrote:
>
>I am seeking advice about interprocess communication between a Java application
>and other, not necessarily Java, applications.
>
>I am developing the Java application under Linux but want to be able to run it
>under Windows. So far I have been using Linux FIFO's (named pipes) rather than
>sockets. I am using FIFO's because it is easier to write shell scripts that
>will create, read from and write to FIFO's than for sockets, and because there
>does not seem to be a Java internal socket; i.e there seems to be no Java analog
>of AF_UNIX (UNIX internal protocols) sockets.
>
>So far this approach is working fine under Linux. I know nothing about Widows
>or Windows programming. I am concerned how portable this will be to Windows.
The only real IPC in Java that is platform independant is via the network
I/O classes. This also happens to work rather well between machines, not
just between processes. Now, it is not light weight.
Windows NT has a think known as a "named pipe" the is much like a fifo.
However, it requires special code to create/manage one. Connecting to
one (being sender usually) is trivial and even works over the network
from Windows 95 and Windows 98. However, the other end requires NT.
Again, sockets or UDP are very handy and with 127.0.0.1 it even should work
reasonably fast. (Loopback address) And, it is easy (or at least easier)
to work over the network to systems of different platforms even. I do this
a lot with normal sockets and RMI and serialization. (All three in one
program even, but usuaully just sockets since that works almost everywhere)
Michael Sinz -- Director of Research & Development, NextBus Inc.
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --------- http://www.nextbus.com
My place on the web ---> http://www.users.fast.net/~michael_sinz
