Over on the OrbZone.org CORBA community website, there's a compelling and thorough rebuttal of Michi's recent ACM Queue article, "The Rise and Fall of CORBA." Unlike the article it critiques, the OrbZone posting provides a very honest and accurate picture of where CORBA is today.
I can't wait until Michi outgrows ICE, which is inevitable assuming his knowledge, experience, and wisdom are growing, because I can't wait to read the next round of articles telling us all that despite what he said previously, ICE was actually really crappy. ;-)
Comments (7)
Why is there no author? Do you happen to know who wrote it?
Posted by Stefan Tilkov | June 28, 2006 4:11 AM
Posted on June 28, 2006 04:11
Steve
Any idea who wrote that article at OrbZone? Its the most exhaustive rebuttal I have seen so far.
Posted by Dilip | June 28, 2006 8:07 AM
Posted on June 28, 2006 08:07
To be honest, I don't know for sure who wrote the rebuttal. If you view the posting on the front page of OrbZone, the name "Dion" is attached to it. I therefore suspect that it was written by Dion Picco, who works for IONA out of our Newfoundland office (where Orbacus is developed and maintained). I emailed Dion to try to get a confirmation but haven't heard back from him.
Posted by Steve Vinoski | June 28, 2006 9:38 AM
Posted on June 28, 2006 09:38
Yes, I did indeed write the article with the help of a few friends from Ireland (Neil Kenealy and Conor Patten). What we didn't want happen was for it to become a rebuttal from IONA's point of view (which it isn't) but rather a defense of CORBA itself from OrbZone. OrbZone is open to all CORBA vendors/users alike with no discrimination and we mention more than IONA in the article. If IONA were to be the only CORBA vendor then we may as well be implementing a proprietary standard. No one wants a CORBA monopoly - the beauty of CORBA is the interoperability with other CORBA vendors with the customer getting the win.
We felt inclined to intervene on CORBA's behalf from its attacks to set the record straight. The attacks are coming from what are essentially CORBA clones spouting propoganda and the death of CORBA but on a technical level the technologies are 99% the same! That other 1% are things like IDL simplification (or what I call 'less flexibility'). The opportunity cost of that 1% is:
- becoming locked into a monopolistic vendor
- lack of interoperability
- no standards based design (meaning they can rewrite the interfaces each version breaking your code)
- small company that could go under and leave you hanging.
Most seasoned developers will already realize those points but we felt it necessary to verbalize it, if only for the record.
The truth is that most CORBA developers are quite happily working on solutions with a mature and robust technology that allows for interoperability among companies on a global level. All ZeroC has done is wipe the fingerprints off the chrome on the CORBA wheel and call it the successor - so in that regard they've barely even reinvented the wheel. To me it amounts to nothing more than the endless exercise of software engineers striving to develop the elusive 'perfect' system rather than attempting to solve new problems in business.
Posted by Dion Picco | June 28, 2006 3:13 PM
Posted on June 28, 2006 15:13
Does anybody know what happened with this page? I could open it a few days ago, but now I restarted my computer and I get an advertising page. I think the orbzone.org domain has expired. Does anybody have a copy of the article?
Posted by Piet van Oostrum | July 2, 2006 2:17 PM
Posted on July 2, 2006 14:17
Hmm, Piet, you're right. I also see only an advertising page when I try to visit orbzone.org. I've sent some emails to the folks who take care of it, hopefully they should have it restored soon.
Posted by Steve Vinoski | July 2, 2006 4:27 PM
Posted on July 2, 2006 16:27
The OrbZone site is back up now. There was a little hiccup with the ISP and the domain name.
Posted by Steve Vinoski | July 3, 2006 12:17 PM
Posted on July 3, 2006 12:17