Linux equivalent of COM?

SciYro · 05-18-2009, 10:50 PM

All Linux distros are more-or-less the same. File locations can differ, and their may be other small diffrences, but all the code should be compatible (especially if your using a environment like Java (or I assume .NET/Mono)). The same goes more-or-less goes for other *nix varients.

paulsm4 · 05-18-2009, 11:12 PM

Hi, mrtedweb -

1. As you probably know (having worked with it), COM/ActiveX is basically an "abstraction" technology. The name of the game is defining an interface, and hiding the implementation details.

2. Sockets are fairly low-level. This can be an advantage, and it can also be a disadvantage. It depends on how complex your distributed system becomes, and how robust it needs to be. If you're comfortable with sockets, and if sockets will suffice - good. Otherwise, you might need to look elsewhere.

3. Web services (for example, SOAP or WCF) might well be overkill.

4. If Java is an option, you might consider RMI. It's a relatively light-weight, robust middle ground between sockets (very low-level, you need to concern yourself with *all* system details) and Web Services.

Java RMI is an "open", portable standard that fills exactly the niche DCOM tried (and failed!) to satisfy.

Here are a couple of links that might help:

http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/artic...i/javarmi.html

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/rmi/index.html

euroquisling · 05-19-2009, 01:59 PM

Sockets are way too low-level for simple applications, if you consider Python programming, which I greatly recommend to you, there's a great library called PYRO, from Python Remote Objects.

Pyro is fantastic, just register a Pyro client at the remote server, and call the remote object's methods *as if they were local*. It's even thread-safe with careful use (at least it turned out safe in my experience).

This is minimum server and client in Pyro

Code:

# Server:

    import Pyro.core

    class JokeGen(Pyro.core.ObjBase):
            def __init__(self):
                    Pyro.core.ObjBase.__init__(self)
            def joke(self, name):
                    return "Sorry "+name+", I don't know any jokes."

    Pyro.core.initServer()
    daemon=Pyro.core.Daemon()
    uri=daemon.connect(JokeGen(),"jokegen")

    print "The daemon runs on port:",daemon.port
    print "The object's uri is:",uri

    daemon.requestLoop()

# Client:

    import Pyro.core

    # you have to change the URI below to match your own host/port.
    jokes = Pyro.core.getProxyForURI("PYROLOC://localhost:7766/jokegen")

    print jokes.joke("Irmen")

Distributed objects do not get simpler than that.