What CORBA got wrong?

Ted Neward compares the WS* efforts with the older CORBA efforts - and has a few criticisms. Hmm. The more I look at what's happening with WS*, the more I think it looks exactly like what the OMG did with CORBA - a blizzard of specs no one cares about, which tend sto make vendor interop harder and harder. But anyway - I thought this was an interesting thing:

For me, the fatal problem for CORBA was that they also tried to tackle standardizing programming models/language bindings. Ever use CORBA using the C++ language bindings? Yuck. How about in Java - not so good either.

Hmm - there's a standard Smalltalk model as well, and somehow, it's simply not that complex. I'll show you:

Step one - turn on the listener in the DST control panel - make sure to enable I3. Step two - create a small class with a count variable, accessors for that variable, and an "API" method:

initialize
     "set the initial state"
     self count: 0.

add: aNumber
     self count: self count + aNumber.

Now, modify the #initialize method this way:

initialize
     self counter: 0.
     ORBObject namingService contextReBind: 'counterService' asDSTName to: self.

And add this method to "tear down" the service when you are done

release
     super release.
     ORBObject namingService contextUnBind: 'counterService' asDSTName.

Now, you can set up an instance by executing Counter inspect and leaving the inspector up for examination. Now, start up DST on another system, and execute this in a workspace: ORBObject namingService contextResolve: 'counterService' asDSTName.. That's it - you can now send the remote objects messages, like #add:, write there in the inspector. From there, wrapping a UI on it isn't hard.

Sure, there's exception handling, dealing with dropped connections - but that's no different than network programming has ever been. If you want the demo above to work with non-Smalltalk code, you need to go ahead and generate the appropriate IDL - but again, that happens for you. Seems a wee bit simpler than the complexity you see in Java and C++, eh? CORBA really didn't have to be complex - it just became so in the mainstream languages. Which says more about those languages than it does about CORBA, IMHO. The main reason that WS* is succeeding where CORBA failed? Port 80