🚀 go-pugleaf

Paula> Hello Techies!
Paula> I've just finished drafting a 3-Tier Visibroker/Oracle/Java web
Paula> installation using VB's caffeine. The operational version works well,
Paula> however, using vendor-specific extensions like 'extensible structs'
Paula> strangles the concept of implementation independance.

The thing to go for, then, is to either 

 - use anys all over the place
 - use some XML convention for passing around data
 - use valuetypes, but only as follows:

   valuetype foo {
     public string stuff;
     public long more_stuff;
   } 

   valuetype bar: truncatable foo {
     public Object yet_more_stuff;
   } 

This is mostly implementation independent (in the sense of ORB independent);
the only thing you have to do for the receivers of the valuetype is to
instantiate a separate ValueFactory for foo and each of its sub-type; this is
not done by default by the IDL compilers I know.

For discussion of Vectors and Hashtables, see other posting. 

                                                                      Philip
-- 
Ban GM foods! Long live the Mesolithicum, pesticides and starvation
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Philip Lijnzaad, lijnzaad@ebi.ac.uk \ European Bioinformatics Institute,rm A2-24
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