Middleware Matters

Stefan points to an argument that discusses in part whether RPC is still considered a good approach for developing distributed applications. Coincidentally, my latest Internet Computing column, called "RPC Under Fire," is now available. In it, I review Steve Loughran's and Edmund Smith's excellent paper "Rethinking the Java SOAP Stack," look at some of the general problems with RPC, and speculate about some of the current research that might provide a better alternative. As always, feedback welcomed.

IONA recently announced the creation of orbzone.org, a new CORBA community website.

Orbzone.org is intended to be a vendor-neutral website shared by the whole CORBA community. All CORBA users are welcome to register and contribute to the message boards, wiki, etc. We've initially populated the site with some articles, postings, links, etc. to get it off the ground, but we'd like all CORBA users to help us shape the site into a truly useful and up-to-date storehouse of CORBA knowledge.

(For the truly paranoid among you :-), if you're concerned about the openness of the site, please let me assure you that while IONA sponsors the site, it's hosted entirely by a 3rd party. It is not contained within the IONA network, nor does it run on IONA machines. Upon registration, all users, vendors, and suppliers of CORBA systems and products have the same rights to post to the site as we do.)

We look forward to your participation at orbzone.org.