Re: Necromail

On Feb 15, 2009, at 22:06, Michael_google gmail_Gersten wrote:
>> Is EOF still available for Apple?  I must admit that I don't even  
>> know.  For
>> a while, I had a printout of a web page on Apple's site which  
>> offered the
>> legacy ObjC WebObjects and EOF for sale.  I doubt that offer is still
>> available.
>
> I thought WebObjects, EOF, etc., was all on the developer's stuff, and
> one of the optional installs even in 10.5. I know I got the frameworks
> installed when I installled all those developers stuff (but watch it
> just be the runtime and not the compilation stuff :-).

Ah, I may be focused on the Objective C implementation of WO and EOF.   
Perhaps the Java implementation is still there.


>> EOF remains an example both of good object-oriented design, and of  
>> the
>> advantages of Objective C.  I don't think that C++ or Java or C#  
>> can handle
>> the polymorphism inherent in the multiples layers of WebObjects  
>> built on EOF
>> built on Foundation.  Last I heard, the Java version of EOF had to  
>> rewrite
>> the entire stack as a monolithic code base - which seems to make it  
>> harder
>> to share the same code between desktop and web applications.  So  
>> much for
>> reusable code...
>
> I thought that the only thing Java could not handle was the "object's
> 'self' class will change", and that was "mostly" solved by the "probe"
> calls that you make when coding in java.

As I understood, the lack of categories in Java means that the  
Foundation classes could not be extended in the polymorphic manner  
that they are in Objective C, and the EOF classes could not be  
extended for WebObjects.  Since Foundation classes only create other  
Foundation classes, the use of categories allows EOF to reuse  
Foundation behavior to create EOF class instances.  Same thing at the  
WO level where EOF is extended to create WO objects without  
recompiling any of the underlying code.  In the ObjC implementation,  
the Foundation Framework, Enterprise Objects Framework, and WebObjects  
Framework are each usable alone or in concert.  I was left with the  
impression that the Java implementation merely implemented the top  
level WO classes without the ability to reuse the lower building blocks.

> Beyond that, I thought that the Java bridge took care of everything
> else. Err, does the Bridge still work?

I think they dropped the Bridge at the same time they dropped support  
for Objective C.

However, most of the above is just guesswork and conjecture.  It's  
like piecing together ancient history at this point (I hope not).

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting