Microsoft - Longhorn 2

[CajunCenturion]

This news article is chock full of statements from a Microsoft software architect, any of which might worth of its own thread.

http://news.com.com/2100-1046-5148148.html?tag=cd_top

Note the comments about the future of .Net, OOP in general, the future and use COM, DCOM, among others.

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[chiph]

I think you're getting COM and DCOM confused. COM is a component architecture that mostly works, and DCOM is an extension to allow the components to talk to each other over a network that doesn't mostly work.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[CajunCenturion]

With respect to COM and DCOM, I would like to quote from the original article.

"Box stressed that COM and DCOM are not dead. 'Only now are some groups inside and outside Microsoft finally taking advantage of COM,' he said."

Isn't it wonderful that only now some groups inside Microsoft are finally taking advantage of COM.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[TroyMcClure]

<<I think you're getting COM and DCOM confused>>
Chiph,
Thank you for clarifying. As I said, I don't have a deep technical knowledge of this and I'm looking at it in the abstract. It just appears that MS made a miscalculation and instead of admitting it is marketing a 'new' technology. They miscalculated the internet itself--and by extension the notion of web services--so the misstep of DCOM doesn't surprise me.
--Troy

 

[dilettante]

Actually a lot of the history we're seeing unfold is just a recapitulation of what happened the first time(s) around.

When mainframes moved from research and accounting back rooms into the enterprise and then the &quot;multiprise&quot; they also faced interoperability issues over wide area networks. In IBM's corner of the world this is where SNA came from (and came in). Minis faced the same issues later on, resulting in efforts such as Tuxedo - but much of what began in the mini world (including CORBA) got run over by the truck of the microcomputer wave.

Now we're seeing &quot;smaller scale&quot; microprocessor based platforms starting their evolution beyond enterprise as well. This has taken different paths, such as removing the NetBIOS shackles from DCOM a few years back, adding XA to the spectrum of technologies in the J2EE palette, and so on. Growth has occurred in a number of directions.

But the limit to growth toward the &quot;multiprise&quot; has been those old, inherently synchronous methods of coupling the components of distributed systems. In many cases this is a problem within organizations that have multiple &quot;islands of automation&quot; - even when they've consolidated everything into one big server room.

I believe Indigo is just Microsoft's attempt to answer this perceived need in a managed and architected fashion. Lots of us were essentially using &quot;web services&quot; before the name had been coined. It was just done in an ad hoc manner. Some people used TCP sockets, others used HTTP. Some structured the data using HTML tags, later some used XML, and still others just passed &quot;raw text&quot; with their own approach to structuring the data (if only simple CSV-style field/row delimiters). Heck, I worked on projects that did this using bisync and bisync-like protocols in the '70s and '80s before TCP/IP became ubiquitous.

There was actually a fix for DCOM and firewalls before SOAP. DCOM can be run over HTTP using NT4 SP 3 and later. Even MSMQ operated over HTTP beginning with Win XP, though before that you needed at least a TCP connection (port 1801) to go between enterprises.

I don't recall Microsoft claiming that DCOM addressed the issues that Indigo is tackling. They simply didn't acknowledge that the need existed because until recently they hadn't tried playing in that problem space. Until recently they've been like a farm kid on a tractor bound to the family acreage. Who needs rules? Who needs safety equipment? Who needs good brakes? Turn signals? Except now that they want to drive the public roads it becomes a different story.

 

[Dimandja]

dilettante! Ok, here is a star.

 

[TroyMcClure]

dilettante
Thanks for that, it was a very well said piece, especially about MS having to drive the public roads.

But I can't help but think there isn't a subversive strategy involved with Longhorn/Indigo wherein those roads become the defacto property of MS.
--Troy

 

[chiph]

But I can't help but think there isn't a subversive strategy involved with Longhorn/Indigo wherein those roads become the defacto property of MS.

You're new to Microsoft, aren't you?
Everyone else has known that for years.


Seriously, the tactic is called &quot;Embrace and Extend&quot;. The most notable instance of that is where Microsoft took advantage of an undefined bit in the LDAP specification when they created Active Directory. As a result, it wouldn't interoperate with anyone else's LDAP implementation. Microsoft's stance was &quot;We extended the spec&quot;.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[dilettante]

TroyMcClure, love the handle by the way. ;-)

I won't argue your last point one bit.

From my point of view during the 90s the existing roads were torn up by the likes of Microsoft, and letting the Internet genie out of the bottle didn't help matters much in itself.

But the past is gone and the future is still &quot;out there&quot; someplace. Most of us just make do with what we have in the present in order to meet our current obligations. As I said in one of my earlier marathon blab-fests, I would love to spend a little more time in the present so I could get more out of my current investment.

 

[jsteph]

Yes, although continual growth and learning is good, it would be nice to not have to re-train every 2 years and abandon a technology with which you've just started to feel comfortable.

And now I'm off to finish filming of my new weight-loss video &quot;Smoke Yourself Thin&quot;
--Troy

 

[jsteph]

OK...DCOM. I've read the following things for what it stands for, all from 'reputable' sources:

Distributed Compound Object Model (the article in the first post here)
Distributed Common Object Model(a Computerworld article

http://www.computerworld.com/news/1997/story/0,11280,21627,00.html)

Distributed Component Object Model (Most of MS's press)

...which is it, or does it matter?
--jsteph

 

[CajunCenturion]

I think it's the Distributed Component Object Model.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[chiph]

I vote for Distributed Component Object Model too.

I was at the PDC when they introduced COM as OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) for Windows 3.1 Lots of &quot;ooohs&quot; and &quot;aaaahs&quot; from the audience as the presenter embedded a spreadsheet inside a Word doc. I didn't see the advantages at the time... I thought it was a frail technology (What if the linked-to file got moved?).

Chip H.



If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first