Comment Don't laugh but... (Score 3) 132
First off - IMHO there are too many choices - perhap this is a problem with the xNIX world - but this is a side point...
Second - This is where I get burnt...
We've now written a good few distributed systems using NT and COM/DCOM. Whats different about this - well we also communicate freely with several Sun based products as well - this is perhaps where COM is kinda neat.
Many of our Sun applications come with their own APIs and already support remote connections. The drawback here is that they need C/C++ to talk freely. So - we create a small wrapper around this and make it into a COM component We then use VB as the glue to manipulate these smal components as well as to talk to our databases.
This all seems to work rather well - I know this will cause some laughs - but VB really is a great language for glueing things together and accessing databases either through ODBC or ADO. If you want fast crunching - create a component in C/C++ and expose it through an API.
The whole thing is easy(ish) to maintain but this is perhaps because we did a propper design first - I guess this is the main thing - get the design right.
We are currently looking into Java - but this - as has been previously stated - is not quite the cornucopia it promises - perhaps it's betterto forget the concept of one language - after all - a language is mearly a tool to getting a job done - so choose the right tool and the job is undertaken efficiently and correctly.
C-))
Second - This is where I get burnt...
We've now written a good few distributed systems using NT and COM/DCOM. Whats different about this - well we also communicate freely with several Sun based products as well - this is perhaps where COM is kinda neat.
Many of our Sun applications come with their own APIs and already support remote connections. The drawback here is that they need C/C++ to talk freely. So - we create a small wrapper around this and make it into a COM component We then use VB as the glue to manipulate these smal components as well as to talk to our databases.
This all seems to work rather well - I know this will cause some laughs - but VB really is a great language for glueing things together and accessing databases either through ODBC or ADO. If you want fast crunching - create a component in C/C++ and expose it through an API.
The whole thing is easy(ish) to maintain but this is perhaps because we did a propper design first - I guess this is the main thing - get the design right.
We are currently looking into Java - but this - as has been previously stated - is not quite the cornucopia it promises - perhaps it's betterto forget the concept of one language - after all - a language is mearly a tool to getting a job done - so choose the right tool and the job is undertaken efficiently and correctly.
C-))
