Re: GNOME CVS: gnome-core mmclouglin

[Ross Golder <ross golder org>]

On Sun, 2001-12-02 at 09:14, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> Examples:
> 
> * Instead of running your addressbook on your iPAQ displaying to your
> desktop, wouldn't you rather have both your iPAQ and your desktop
> both talk to a network server that manages your addressbook info and
> arbitrates concurrent access?
> 

Isn't that the arena of protocols like LDAP?

> * Instead of running a load applet on your server and displaying to
> your desktop, why not have a load monitoring system that separates
> the monitoring part, which runs on the server, from the GUI, which
> runs on any other machine and connects at any time (perhaps even from
> multiple machines at once) with suitable authentication credentials?
> 

Isn't this the arena of protocols like SNMP?

> Anyway, while the idea of remote components is interesting, in
> practice the network is _not_ transparent. It has high latency, it has
> low bandwidth, and it goes down all the time. To get robustness and
> decent performance, you are better off using protocols that can cope
> with this non-idea behavior.

ORBit2 seems to have this sussed, AFAICS. People that don't require
network components would just use unix domain sockets.

> GNOME should aim to make it easier to develop networked client-server
> applications instead of relying on heavyweight RPC or remote display
> hacks. Support for SOAP and associated protocols is a step in the
> right direction.
> 

Well, there is soup, for applications that ought to use it, but I don't
think SOAP is a one-size-fits-all solution.

£0.02

--
Ross