python and SOAP??

[Cameron Laird]

In article <9valdt$ik6$1 at pea.uk.research.att.com>,
Duncan Grisby  <dgrisby at uk.research.att.com> wrote:
>In article <pan.2001.12.13.16.38.05.533668.2947 at web.de>,
>Markus Jais  <mjais at web.de> wrote:
>>On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 16:31:34 +0100, Cameron Laird wrote:
>>
>>> http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2001/06/14/pysoap.html
>>
>>thanks for the URL. was very helpful.
>
>It's a good article. I'd like to correct a common myth about CORBA,
>though. The article says:
>
>  """
>  Compared to other distributed programming tools like DCOM or CORBA
>  (or, more properly, the IIOP which transports CORBA,) SOAP is
>
>    * platform-neutral,
>    * computing language-independent, and
>    * Unicode-ready.
>  """
>
>CORBA's IIOP _is_ platform-neutral, language independent, and Unicode
>ready.
			.
			.
			.
I'm glad you called me on that.  At best, that
passage is misleading.

That was unintentional on my part, of course.
I esteem CORBA's (or IIOP's) platform-neutrality
and language independence.  The only argument
there is that it seems to remain difficult for
many languages to construct high-quality CORBA
bindings--maybe harder than corresponding SOAP
ones, although I'm well aware of the defects in
the latter.

Unicode's the sticking point.  Again, I under-
stand that, in principle, CORBA does a good job
of transporting any kind of data (is this a
good point, by the way, for a gratuitous snipe
at SOAP's performance?).  On a practical level,
though, multi-byte codesets have not been a
focus for most CORBA implementations, and I be-
lieve the majority still only support
single-byte for (IDL) "string".  True?

I'm cross-posting this to c.o.c, to ensure we
reach a fully accurate answer.  This is my
summary:  at this point, it's easier to find a
SOAP binding that "does the right thing" with
Unicode than it is to track down such an ORB.
The one question I have about this is whether
I'm being unfair to (IDL) "wstring".  I'm in-
experienced with CORBA; my impression, though,
is that wstring isn't the solution one wants.
I welcome correction from those who know better.
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html