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- From: David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>
- To: "Hunter, David" <dhunter@Mobility.com>
- Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 17:59:35 -0800
"Hunter, David" wrote:
>
> From: Miles Sabin [mailto:msabin@cromwellmedia.co.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2000 10:57 AM
> >
> > I'm having trouble seeing why XML over HTTP is preferable to
> > eg. CORBA or Java RMI (maybe tunneled through HTTP if there's
> > a need to traverse firewalls) for application specific comms.
> > How is application specific markup better than an application
> > specific binary wire protocol?
>
> The two thoughts off the top of my head:
>
> 1) It's easier to debug. If things are going wrong, it's pretty cool to be
> able to just pull the data up in Notepad, and see if there's anything screwy
> going on. Admittedly not a powerful reason at all. :-)
Go back to the drawing board on that one ... higher developer
productivity is a big deal!! ;-)
> 2) The ability to swap in and out different clients, and leave the server
> alone. If I want to use a Visual Basic client on my company's Windows
> boxen, and C++ clients on my Mac boxen, and maybe Java on my UNIX boxen,
> they can all still just communicate with the server via my XML document
> type. I don't have to make everyone use Java, or lock myself into a
> specific CORBA vendor, or use DCOM and make ALL my clients Windows boxen,
> etc.
If your CORBA vendor gives you lock-in, yell at them till they fix
it ... that's a severe bug. XML + HTTP doesn't change that interop
picture.
However, I think it's true that since XML is text, most any programming
tool nowadays can work with it at least a little bit, and that's not
true of any normal RPC. One doesn't do bit-twiddling in VB, it's nasty
for most protocols ... one needs expensive (and usually proprietary)
tools to create DLLs to do the bit-twiddly stuff for you.
The cross-platform interop story is one reason I never could support
the RMI story ... there was none, and interoperability between systems
is the driving force behind every networked application.
- Dave
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