[stellation-res] Using RMI for WVCM?

[Mark C Chu-Carroll <markcc@xxxxxxxxxx>]

A random thought just struck me... 

If we're ditching manitoba in favor
of an RPC system, why aren't we considering RMI? It's built in to every
Java implementation; it's easier to use than pretty much any of the alternatives
that we're looking at; and it would involve including less miscellaneous
third party stuff in the WVCM reference implementation. Is there any good
reason not to support RMI as an RPC transport? And if not, is there any
good reason not to develop to it first, and then worry about adding other
transports later if they're needed? 

I've been thinking in terms of XML based
transports not because they're truly necessary, but because everything
I've done for communication in Stellation for the last three years has
been XML based. But there's no reason why the transport for RPCs in our
WVCM implementation needs to be XML based. And once we consider the possibility
of dropping XML, the whole nature of the marshalling and demarshalling
issues change dramatically.  I think that we need to seriously consider
this, and make sure that I'm not missing anything; but if I'm not, I say
we dive into RMI.

        -Mark

Mark Craig Chu-Carroll,  IBM T.J.
Watson Research Center  
*** The Stellation project: Advanced SCM Research
***      http://stellation.eclipse.org
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