IDL (was: C++)

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 12:19:41PM +0300, Bahadir Balban wrote:

> So why are you in favor of IDL compilers? To me that is also an
> abstraction that is a compromise. You could simply use a library with
> helper functions, and know what is going on, instead of design a whole
> system around compiler-generated communication idioms.

I'm not familiar with other IDL compilers; but MiG at least doesn't
really do much in a way of abstractions. It rather describes what will
be sent in a message almost 1:1. It is a means to say, "create a pair of
stubs that will assemble the message in the following way".

In as far as it is a compromise (though I'm not sure we are really
giving up anything relevant here), it's definitely a good one. It saves
the complexity of building messages per hand (and keeping client and
server stubs in sync), without really taking away understanding how the
messages look.

-antrik-