Experimentation with Macromedia's Applet Ace:
All the servers are down, my ISP apparently
doesn't like server-side processes :(
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Sam's Rant: Distributed Computing... What do I use?
I am a person who likes to stay on the bleeding edge of technology. This has caused me, to my infinite displeasure to attempt to "embrace and integrate" ActiveX technology as well as investigate the Java Beans specification and other facets of the JDK 1.1. One of the most interesting technologies I have seen is the RMI specification and it's implementation in the JDK 1.0.2. Here is something extremely complex in other environments including DCOM and CORBA made almost trivial by an application of Java technology and a little help from Ken Arnold :). Without using special source code stubs, without a separate language for interface definition, and without a special container for running my components I can create a distributed application without muss or fuss. Absolutely incredible. Where are these other technologies? In the dark ages, at least in Web terms. In an age where someone who writes HTML formatting code is called a programmer you still have a learning curve as high as a mountain for something that has been shown to be trivial like distributed objects. DCOM, which I have not implemented due to its reliance on a special server that comes with NT and Visual C++ 4.2a, has so much baggage I will not even contemplate using it unless it is absolutely necessary and a gun is to my head. CORBA must still be a consideration, however, for cross-langauge environments where you must communicate with C++ programs. As someone mentioned on USENET recently, "If there was a native compiler for Java we would have to declare C++ a legacy system." So, what is my point you may ask? Try RMI, you won't believe how easy it is to use. Perhaps it is a little slow, but so is CORBA. Maybe a native compiler or two would allow Java to rule even the server side market. Past Rants:
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