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Developments:
Distributed Object Dreams
A Java-Corba alliance could give developers the best of both worlds-if it can combat the Microsoft juggernaut
By John Tibbetts and Barbara Bernstein
omputing utopians have dreamt of a day when many kinds of applications running on many kinds
of hardware and software platforms would seamlessly interact with one another. Platform
interoperability, we visionaries foresaw, would honor software legacies, give users maximum
choice, and simultaneously enable applications to work together to acc
omplish increasingly
ambitious tasks with ever-greater efficiency. A series of advances-PCs, client-server, objects,
the Web-all seemed to be major steps toward platform openness, but the goal has remained
elusive.
The most promising development of recent years has been the Object Management Group's Corba standard. Corba provides standardized plumbing for connecting heterogeneous objects written specifically to their home platforms. It lets these objects communicate with one another. Corba now has several years worth of enhancements behind it, and the support of hundreds of vendor-partners. Building applications with Corba is quite rewarding, but it's also very complex, requiring specialized skills and strong motivation.
Recently, an exciting alternative has emerged. Java's built-in distributed object mechanism, Remote Method Interface (RMI), makes everything that is hard to do in Corba-debugging, distributed object creation, cleanup-virtually effortless. Credit is due to solid engineering, but RMI' s real strength is the power of the Java-based architecture.
Java objects are truly portable. More than that, they are mobile and can move around the network on a moment-by-moment basis. This makes distributing the computing radically easier. Objects don't stay put and shout to each other; they can actually zip over and pay a visit, execute a bit of behavior at the location that makes the most sense, then return home or move somewhere else.
Java objects can execute anywhere because Java works everywhere. This is the advantage of a universal language. While Corba works like a magical translator that lets English speakers, Russian speakers, and Farsi speakers understand each other, RMI gets everybody speaking Esperanto. Conversations are effortless, and everybody can operate equally well in any country.
To old openness idealists like ourselves, RMI presents a quandary. Its amazing interoperability comes at the expense of inclusiveness. Java embraces all platforms, but it talks only to itself and excludes all other object models. Do we really want to cut our C++, Object Cobol, and Smalltalk objects out of the picture entirely?
A Java-Corba alliance is in the works. Sun declared last year that it would make RMI speak Corba's on-the-wire protocol, permitting interoperability with non-Java objects. But you can't use any of the fancy functionality of RMI when talking to a Corba object, so every compromise in this direction removes a little of RMI's raw power.
It would be interesting to let the best mix of Corba and RMI emerge over time, but we may not have time. Here, as everywhere else, the Microsoft juggernaut threatens. Microsoft's own Distributed Computing Model is far inferior to either Corba or RMI, totally proprietary, essentially platform-specific, and technologically mediocre. But it comes built into Microsoft products, pushed by Redmond both overtly and covertly. This model for distributed objects will sweep the industry unless the alternative is virtually irresistible.
The dilemma , then, is how much openness we can we afford with Microsoft looming on the distributed-object horizon. How much power and ease of use can RMI give up to achieve a Corba alliance?
Is the sadder but wiser course to go for broke with Java, on the theory that the only way to counter one sweeping world-view juggernaut is with another?
It's wonderful that interoperability really does seem to be within reach, even if not in as pristine a form as we'd once hoped. Our industry, particularly in the Gates era, turns idealists into pragmatists fast.
John Tibbetts and Barbara Bernstein are partners in Kinexis, a San Francisco consulting firm.
You can visit them at their Web site at
www.kinexis.com
.
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