> Often an API to a service like opentick is language neutral in the > sense > that it has a standard C interface that can be used by most > languages. When > you say there are Perl, C++, etc. APIs are you really saying that > there are > wrappers written in these languages around a basic API? If that is > the case > then I think it should be possibler to program access to opentick > directly > in J and not require use of an intermediate language step. It might > be > easier to use existing software in other languages, but there is a > chance it > might be easier to go direct with J.
A quick look at the source code, shows that at least for .NET and Perl, everything is done natively, without using an external C library. All the communications is done using TCP/IP sockets. In other words, the communication protocol is implemented in the language. While it would be perfectly possible (but I didn't check if the license permits this) to reverse-engineer the protocol from other libraries, the risk is that if OpenTick changes the protocol, then applications written on top of the J API could break. Applications built on top of the other languages APIs would also break, but I expect that OpenTick would timely provide a replacement for the libraries. -- Stef ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
