Tom,
Thanks a lot for this tale from the trenches. Everytime I am getting ready
to unsubscribe (not 'cause this is a bad list, but it just a time soaker), a
post like this reminds me why I value this community. Great story!
BTW, do you still use CORBA once you are in your Servlet layer, or did you
gut it completly from your architecture.
Regards,
-Chris.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Jenkins [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 11:17 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: XML vs. Serial (was: Cached Rowsets-do we need to use
> them)
>
> 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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