DCOM to distribute your applications, but Software AG c
urrently has a product in beta that extends OLE and ActiveX to Unix servers.
Lotus and Netscape take the open road with the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), which offers a more complete object architecture than DCOM. Specified by the Object Management Group (OMG), CORBA promises a way to implement objects to be shared across machines, even when those objects run on different OSes.
Netscape plans to offer the JavaScripting of Java, CORBA objects, and support for CORBA services and IIOP when Netscape Enterprise Server 3.0 ships in the second quarter. Lotus is planning on exposing Domino back-end classes via Java this summer and extending this exposure to IIOP by year's end.
CORBA's strong suits are its platform independence and its provision for transaction processing as a part of its specification. DCOM is currently a single-platform solution, and Microsoft's transaction services are built on top of DCOM; it boasts an installed user base of over 50 million a
nd tight integration with the Windows OS.
Netscape is not alone in considering DCOM to be a proprietary architecture, but Microsoft contends that while DCOM is a complete application environment, CORBA is simply a mix of specifications assembled from many software vendors' ideas about how to interpret and implement distributed objects.
If history is any indication, a bridging technology between DCOM and CORBA will evolve, and the debate will subside. For now, expect to hear a lot of noise on each one's benefits.
The Open Force vs. the Legacy Object
