On 24 Aug, 16:21, Mark Woyna <wo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Aug 22, 1:58 am, ap...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> First, Orbix and OrbixWeb are 2 *different* products. The only thing
> they share is the name.
My suspicions are confirmed.
> My experience matches yours. OrbixWeb was as buggy a piece of junk as
> Orbix 3.X.
Wel, that's not exactly my experience. OrbixWeb looks like it might be
slightly better. I have had terrible trouble with the C++ Orbix giving
problems with client-side callback invocation. It's hard to tell in
these early days but it looks like OrbixWeb might not have these
problems.
> Given that it's an ancient product, and that there are far
> better orbs out there, e.g. JacORB, I don't understand why you insist
> on sticking with OrbixWeb.
Believe it or not, I recommended that we do. This is because I have
misgivings about moving to JacORB. This is despite me being an open
source advocate. Indeed when I started the java work I used JacORB to
begin with. Here are some of the reasons I gave against JacORB:
o The binary distribution of jacORB does not work - you have
to build from source.
o jacORB will not build with java 6. I have re****ted this to
the mailing list. No response yet.
o The bug list is quite large (not huge, but not small either)
and has some very old bugs going back to 2002.
o My impression from taking to PrismTech is that their version
has diverged a bit from the official one. They do have some
fixes pending but their changes seem to get merged back quite
infrequently. We would therefore be under some practical
pressure
to use the PrismTech version and would thus not benefit as
much
as you would have thought from jacORB being open source.
o After speaking to PrismTech I think that jacORB is used quite
heavily in industry but it is mainly things like the public
sector, defence and telecoms. The Royal Bank of Scotland was
using it several years back but I do not know if they still
are
and I do not know of any other banks that have looked at it.
> There's no technical reason you can't move
> to JacORB, a superior *free* orb with a fairly active developer
> community.
Actually there are at least two reasons: first it won't build with
java6 (and it must be built from the source); second, I have a problem
with the use of ****table interceptors and I have had insufficient
response from the jacorb mailing list (and I tried USENET also). My
experiences of IONA sup****t in the past have been bad but at the
moment I am getting very good sup****t - one IONA consultant in
particular is being extremely helpful and we do not even have a
sup****t agreement!
> I think you'll find that practically *nobody* uses OrbixWeb. 'Notice
> how few responses you're getting to your questions? Granted, this
> usenet group doesn't get the traffic it once did, but you'll be hard
> pressed to find any recent discussion of OrbixWeb.
I think you're right; what a pity. But how many people are using CORBA
with java? Not many, I suspect. Certainly that seems to be the case
with the investment banks in The City.
> IMHO, OrbixWeb was
> slapped together by Iona at the beginning of the Java craze
> Iona wasn't investing
> much in its core CORBA products.
Well, it is old technology for IONA, I know. Other ORBS like jacorb,
TAO. etc are under active development. But this does not matter to me
too much because the CORBA will be phased out on this project anyway.
I am just trying to replace the C++ with java right now. So I do not
need a sparkling product, just one that works reasonably well with
some sup****t in case we hit a showstopper.
> Through Orbix 3.x, Iona's products were generally crap.
I too have been disappointed in Orbix as it has evolved over the
years. But all the ORBs I have looked at have had different problems
and their fair share of bugs. I think Orbix has played leapfrog with
these other ORBs (getting better then the other ORBs overtake it then
Orbix overtakes them etc etc). If you think Orbix 3 is bad you should
have seen Orbix 2! I used to use MICO in preference. But I would now
choose Orbix 3 instead of MICO (mainly because MICO still does not
have multi-threading sup****t). So I think that comment is a little
harsh.
> I swear that
> their patch numbers read like pi.
I laughed out loud when I read that!
> it got so bad that we eventually dropped Orbix and wrote our own orb.
> How bad do you think it has to get for someone to consider writing
> their own middleware?
Good grief, that's extreme! Why didn't you use JacORB? It has been
around for quite a while.
> Now, I'll admit that I get a chance to check out Orbix 2000, which I
> understand was a complete rewrite from the ground up of Orbix, led by
> Steve Vinoski. From what I've heard it wasn't half bad, but by that
> time the CORBA market was at a standstill.
I am considering using Orbix 6 if OrbixWeb proves to be too buggy. The
alternative would be the PrismTech version of JacORB.
> > Regards,
>
> > Andrew Marlow
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