DOMC Session 5: Future of CGI

Question: Is CORBA/IIOP a better alternative to CGI?

asked by Andreas Vogel who also led the subsequent discussion and compiled the following summary. Andreas is Senior Research Scientist with the DSTC , Brisbane, Australia.

Summary

To structure the discussion I made suggested the following five issues:

1. Separation of interface and implementation
   general agreement that separation of interface and implementation is a good thing

2. Multiple programming languages
   OMG has adopted mapping from OMG IDL to C, C++, SmallTalk, Ada. Other language bindings are progressed, e.g. for Cobol, Java, Perl.

   The CGI camp claimed to support more languages now.

3. CORBAservices
   CORBAservices are specification of standard functionality needed in distributed systems, e.g. Name Service, Event Service, Trading Service. CORBA/IIOP would allow the direct use of those services.

   It was mentioned to consider Server APIs to provide similar functionality.

4. Wide support
   There are currently 15+ ORB products available. CGI camp claimed to have the far larger base of installations.

5. Integration of legacy systems/applications through object wrapping
   was not discussed

The discussion came to a first conclusion, namely that

• CGI is a valid technique for simple interfaces, e.g. to fetch a document and run a specific filter over the document.

• CORBA is a superior technique when is comes to more complex, operational interfaces, e.g. a home-banking application.

1. modify HTTP server so that the can translate specific HTTP request, in particular of the URL type "IOR:..." into calls on interoperable object references (IOR).

2. make CORBA objects understand HTTP

3. IIOP as part of the WWW protocol suite which would enable invocations on interoperable object references (IOR) directly from a WWW browser.