Exposing COM via XML-RPC or Something Else

[Samuel A. Falvo II]

>>COM development followed two conflicting tracks. The C/C++ 
>>folks followed one track, and the VB folks took another. The 
>>VB stuff is complex (because the VB folks took all kinds of 
>>shortcuts based on VB internals). It's also what caught on 
>>(IDispatch, Automation, the stuff the Python's COM 

IDispatch is a nice idea, as it provides a language-neutral way of scripting
things.  AmigaOS implements highly similar capability via ARexx-ports.
AmigaOS has benefitted //greatly// from this facility.

I can't speak for the complexity of IDispatch, as I've not yet seen its
interface definition.  However, for my projects at least, if it's too
Windows specific, or if it's too complicated for my purposes, I plan on
creating an ARexx-like scripting interface called IScriptingInterface.
Otherwise, I see absolutely no problems with using an already defined
interface standard.

>>discovery) is probably better architected, but nowhere near as 
>>widely used. The part of CORBA that is widely used is 
>>actually much more straightforward in COM.

This I can believe, as most of the CORBA implementations I've seen were
dynamic dispatch implementations (oddly enough!) :).

>I've still got some room to convince my friend to use something aside from

YOU'LL NEVER CONVINCE ME, EVIL FIEND!!  ;)

>COM, and I'd like to cheat by asking you for the answers, since you sound
>knowledgable.  Would you recommend COM over CORBA for a low-level object
>system?

Component system, at least.  The word "object" has been too-far overloaded
with things that are instantiated from a "class", and exhibits
"inheritance," etc.  Never mind the fact that aggregation produces the exact
same end-result... ;)

>Mainly assembler right now; we'll be using C to implement the object
>system and most of its components, but also some assembly.

Correction -- Dolphin is almost entirely in C now.

-- 
KC5TJA/6, DM13, QRP-L #1447
Samuel A. Falvo II
Oceanside, CA