Re: Web Services/SOAP and CORBA

I don't think that "SOAP for Java is merely used as an interface or
gateway to the original and heavyweight back-end (J2EE with EJB storing
data in a database)" is a true statement.

SOAP is an interface spec - what you connect it to on the backend is only
your applications business.  It is true that some SOAP packages provide
simplified integration with EJB and other technology.  But these are
conviniencies, niceties that you may or may not take advantage of.  Tere are
plenty of applciations that do not integrate with EJBs and backend DB - one
of ours is an example.

Regarding lifecycle service - this is a long running battle between DCOM and
CORBA world.  It is very neat that DCOM destroys server objects for you
automatically.  However, CORBA programmers do not beleive in this service in
a way.  There are two main reasons against it:
1) Distributes lifecycle management is somewhat expensive.  Especially if
you have cross company integration and potential sporadic line connection.
But then DCOM was never used for that purpose in most cases.
2) From CORBA perspective it is almost impossible automatically to deduce
when object is no longer needed.  Simply because object dissapeared from
clients memory does not mean that its reference no longer exists.  And there
could be any number of clients that poses that reference by getting it from
the client in a way that is completely untracebale.

So in CORBA it is up to you to perform object life cycle management in most
cases.

Leo

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of implementing SOAP applications today
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Christophe Herreman
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 3:27 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [SOAP] Web Services/SOAP and CORBA


Hello Leo,

You are saying "...use a library for WSDL and ORB.  Of course you can do
both by hand, but you got to be crazy to do that today."

I’m a DCOM programmer and I'm currently evaluating some SOAP toolkits for
Java. Something strikes me: SOAP for Java is merely used as an interface or
gateway to the original and heavyweight back-end (J2EE with EJB storing
data in a database)

What I’m looking for is a lightweight and easy to learn ORB service: a
service that will handle object lifetime and serialization of access to
objects, just like in DCOM.

Is RMI the correct answer?

BR.

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