[Mono-list] .NET ORB using Java

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 03:37, Vibhu Sharma wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Here is what we are thinking of doing...
> 
> 0. Take a Java implementation of some ORB - say OpenORB.
> 1. Take the sources [.java files] and compile them in J# to get a .NET
> implementation.

Alternate solution: Compile the .java files with a *real* Java compiler,
and use the Java .class files from .NET.

You can do this by using IKVM.NET; see: http://www.ikvm.net.  They
provide a Java VM for .NET.

>         1.1 this would be JDK 1.1.4 compatible - so somethings may not
> work.

Exactly, which is one reason to prefer IKVM.

>         1.2 Does Microsoft have any plans to upgrade J# to support
> Java 2? [especially JDK 1.4 and above]?

Mono can't speak for Microsoft, but I would imagine that the answer is
NO.  (Not just "no", but NO.)  Why?  Microsoft doesn't have a license to
Java 2, only to Java 1.1.x.  I can't see this changing any time soon.

>                 1.2.1 We don't really care for swing etc at this stage
> - i.e no UI related stuff is needed
>                 1.2.2 We also don't care about RMI, JNI etc. for this
> particular task
>         1.3 Has there been some work done on above? 

IKVM.NET?

>         Once the ORB is built, this would essentaily be a .NET
> assembly [.dll] targetting the CLR rather than being a .jar targeting
> a JVM
> 
> 2. We can then do IDL2Java to get the .java files.
> 3. Recompile these stubs using J# to create yet another .NET assembly
>         - in case this piece requires changes, would be painful
> because you wont want to edit and recompile the stubs everytime
> 
> 4. We can then use any .NET compliant language like C# to write the
> clients in.
> 
> 5. On Mac OSX, we would be doing Cocoa development, so UI in Objective
> C and non-UI in Java [using OpenORB], and since both support Cocoa,
> life would/should be simpler.
> 
>         - this means no mono or CORBA remoting needed.

Huh?  Doesn't an ORB imply CORBA remoting?  Or did I miss something?

>         - may not be a popular thought for this forum, but please let
> me know if this has been tried and if there are some pitfalls related
> to this.

Well, there's always Remoting.Corba...

Personally, I'd go for SOAP.  Everything supports that, including
AppleScript (IIRC), and it's fairly easy (trivial?) to write an ASP.NET
web service that talks SOAP.  Of course, I'm not privy to all you're
trying to do, so...

You might also try IKVM.NET.  It uses GNU Classpath to provide its Java
class library, so not all required functionality may be available.

 - Jon