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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    [FW: Re: Different corba implementations]
From:       Kurt Granroth <kurt_granroth () email ! mot ! com>
Date:       1999-06-16 16:12:21
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----- Forwarded message from Phil Mesnier <mesnier_p@ociweb.com> -----
Date: 	Wed, 16 Jun 1999 11:01:46 -0500
From: mesnier_p@ociweb.com (Phil Mesnier)
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (WinNT; I)
To: granroth@alpha.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de
Subject: Re: Different corba implementations

There actually is an effort to reduce the footprint of TAO by 
supporting something known as "minimum CORBA" which will produce
a libACE.so and libTAO.so that are somewhat smaller than what
is available for now.

If you would be so kind as to forward my comments, I would like
to address some of the issues raised during this thread.  

First, the size issue, I did some poking around and yes, ACE is
on the order of 4 megs, TAO on the order of 3.5 megs.  This is
larger than MICO, but not by orders of magnitude.  I have seen
that using the egcs compiler on solaris make a product that _IS_
an order of magnitude larger, but that is because it adds all the
object files, symbol tables and whatever else is need for debugging.
Certainly not what is needed for a shipping product.

Building TAO does take a lot of space for the full implementation,
but a full implementation is not needed for all applications.  You
may build the services as needed.  That is where the real resource
hogging is.

Someone pointed out that TAO does not have c++ bindings.  I am 
assuming for the moment that I misread that statement because TAO
has _ONLY_ c++ bindings.

Someone also claimed that ACE is very "wired" and TAO more-so.  I
assume that implies platform dependancies.  On the contrary, ACE
and TAO abstract away platform dependacies to only a small segment
of the library, which is generally not touched by application
developers.

Also Kurt, your comment about Iridium is not entirely correct.  
Iridium uses Orbix as its orb, as Iridium predates TAO by a number
of years.  Iridium uses ACE extensively.

Finally, while ACE and TAO are used in military products, they are
also used in medical products, such as imaging systems, scientific
projects such as high-energy physics research and astromical research
as well.  That ACE and TAO have been demonstrated effective in 
avionics application should not engender a fear of flying, rather
can be viewed as "If it's good enough to keep an airplane in the
sky, it must be pretty good"

Take care,
Phil

Kurt Granroth wrote:
> 
> Jo Dillon wrote:
> >   I presume that size includes the whole ACE class framework. What's
> > the size if you ditch all that and just take the ORB and the bits
> > it depends on?
> 
> FWIW, I don't think that that would be practically feasible.  ACE is
> intimately integrated into TAO -- TAO even stands for "The ACE ORB".  I think
> stripping ACE out of TAO would be like stripping Qt out of KDE...possible, but
> only if you are insane.
> --
> Kurt Granroth            | granroth@kde.org
> KDE Developer/Evangelist | http://www.pobox.com/~kurt_granroth
>          KDE -- Putting a Friendly Face on Linux

--
Phil Mesnier
Sr. Software Engineer,          http://www.ociweb.com
Object Computing, Inc.          +01.314.579.0066

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Kurt Granroth            | granroth@kde.org
KDE Developer/Evangelist | http://www.pobox.com/~kurt_granroth
         KDE -- Putting a Friendly Face on Linux

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