QuantLib CORBA vs. SOAP

[Enrique Melero-2]

El Viernes 04 Enero 2002 15:15, escribiste:

> > TermStructure interface would be a GREAT achievement, something that
> > would really boost our project.
>
> is there some demand out there for using QuantLib via CORBA?  i'm just
> trying to get an idea of the general interest in this endeavor.

IMHO , spending efforts in CORBA instead of SOAP is an error.
I know a commercial product using CORBA to provide server based financial
analytics. It has taken 5 years of development with endless problems about
the CORBA versions and complex client architecture. In the end the CORBA
interface stays only internally to provide distributed calculation
capabilities but it has been dropped from the desktop for the obvious
problems ( licensing etc ) .



--
Enrique Melero

[Ihsan Ali Al Darhi]

> IMHO , spending efforts in CORBA instead of SOAP is an error.
> I know a commercial product using CORBA to provide server based financial
> analytics. It has taken 5 years of development with endless problems about
> the CORBA versions and complex client architecture. In the end the CORBA
> interface stays only internally to provide distributed calculation
> capabilities but it has been dropped from the desktop for the obvious
> problems ( licensing etc ) .


Can you illaborate more?
Mo

[enrico.sirola-3]

Hi Enrique - nice name btw ;-),

>>>>> "Enrique" == Enrique Melero <[hidden email]> writes:

    Enrique> El Viernes 04 Enero 2002 15:15, escribiste:

    >> > TermStructure interface would be a GREAT achievement,
    >> something that > would really boost our project.
    >>
    >> is there some demand out there for using QuantLib via CORBA?
    >> i'm just trying to get an idea of the general interest in this
    >> endeavor.

I would be very intrested.

    Enrique> IMHO , spending efforts in CORBA instead of SOAP is an
    Enrique> error.  I know a commercial product using CORBA to
    Enrique> provide server based financial analytics. It has taken 5
    Enrique> years of development with endless problems about the
    Enrique> CORBA versions and complex client architecture. In the
    Enrique> end the CORBA interface stays only internally to provide
    Enrique> distributed calculation capabilities but it has been
    Enrique> dropped from the desktop for the obvious problems (
    Enrique> licensing etc ) .

hmmm in my opinion, CORBA and SOAP are both cool, with different
application fields. SOAP, presently, means HTTP, SMTP and ascii
transfers with all it implies: loosely coupled client and server
(good) and not very excellent performances (bad), while CORBA has a
more efficient way to marshal objects (good) at the cost of tighter
coupling between remote processes (bad). I think i wouldn't like a
SOAP-based publish/subscribe system for market data, for this stuff
COM or CORBA are probably better solutions (i.e. transfering very
frequently small amounts of data) - does any1 out there have direct
experience of market data publishing via SOAP?

Licensing is a problem with commercial full-featured CORBA solutions,
anyway there are opensource full featured CORBA orbs you can
install on a zillion clients at no cost. I specially like OmniORB
(http://www.omniorb.org) for its python support. It doesn't support
object by value, anyway has tremendously good performances (there
should be a benchmark somewhere on their website).

I think the real problem with CORBA is to use it in on a wide area
network environment. Here you need CORBA-aware application-level
firewalls -- there is an OMG spec about it, but I didn't see any
proposed implementation in freesoftwareland.
Cheers,
Enrico

--
Enrico Sirola <[hidden email]>
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