[omniORB] CORBA benefits over EJB model

[Zed Shaw]

Ben,

If you are worried about time to market, then you'd probably want to go with
the EJB stuff.  My suggestion wasn't so much to do a CORBA/EJB combo now, but
rather plan to replace slower EJB server components with faster CORBA
versions later and only if you have to.  But, if you are doing this for other
customers and you need it done now, skip the CORBA and go EJB.

Now, for your CORBA database access problems, might I suggest GNOME-DB at
http://www.gnome-db.org/.  It was originally written as a kind of JDBC for
Gnome, but later became a really well done CORBA only interface to just about
every database on the planet.  The interface is consistent accross all
databases (like JDBC) and is meant to be accessible from any CORBA client.
It comes in a library and has a set of tools for db management.

Now, I'm pretty sure this is relatively Linux specific, but, being as it's
CORBA, you could just put the GNOME-DB interface on the database server and
access the database using CORBA over the network, rather than using a local
library and access the database using database library calls.

Anyway, hope that helps.

Zed

On Thursday 07 June 2001 09:54, you wrote:
> Great input, thanks Zed.
>
> However, I'd just like to comment on a point regarding the use of
> CORBA and EJB together.  As you mentioned, this would make our system
> an installation nightmare.  And also a maintenance nightmare, of
> course - if something goes wrong at a customer site, there are SO many
> possible points of failure! ;)  We're new to the  middle-tier
> quagmire, so I'd rather go EJB or CORBA to ease the complexity.
> (After all, we could code a lot of the CORBA objects in Java where we
> don't care so much about the performance.)
>
>
> The real sticking point my team has are the time-to-market factor,
> which is percieved as far greater for CORBA based system.  It does
> seem to me that we'd probably end up coding more of our own services
> if we went with CORBA.  Perhaps I'm wrong?
>
> Which reminds me....
>
> I've also got the problem of how to manage database connection pooling
> and transactions.  This would all be pretty much handled by an EJB
> serer vendor, but what if a need database connections in my CORBA
> object bolted on the side?  I'm just not sure whether you can create a
> connection pool that provides connections to multiple-language
> servers...
>
> Best regards,
> ___________________
> Ben Miller.
> Technical Architect

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-- 
Zed A. Shaw