[omniORB] Newbee Design Question

[Gerd Schmitt]

Hi, OmniOrbers,

excuse me if that is a inapropriate place for this question.
If that's the case please point me to the proper one.


About 7 years ago I came in touch with Corba but didn't
do anything ever since. Now I'm considering to introduce
it to my recent project. I'd like to hear an experts
opinion if this seems reasonable or if I would be
better of doing it by simple network calls.

We have several GUIs that share common data, i.e.
a simulation state (which is shown on the GUI).
I consider to setup a server with a servant that
holds among other things this state.

Now, if  the user triggers a change I can easily forward
this call to the the servant, but how do the GUIs
recognize this state change?
Would it make sense to setup something like the
"Observer Pattern"? Or would you just poll the servant
every second to detect the change (which in my mind dosn't
seem very nice).

I assume setting up a callback mechanism would require
servants in each GUI application which will be called by the
state servant. To do so they would need to register themselfs
first. But what happens if one of the GUIs hangs or crashes?
Would this lock up the state server? If not, is the server
able to detect the crash of the remote GUI. I don't want
to restart every application in this case but just the crashed one.

Are there any other issues I haven't thought of?


Any comments would be appriciated.


Gerd Schmitt
extern.schmitt at kmweg.de