Products Reviewed

CORBA COM/DCOM Enterprise JavaBeans

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Executive Summary

Related Links

Network Computing, Oct. 15, 1998 "Muddied Waters: Distributed APIs" Network Computing, Network Design Manual "Distributed Object (CORBA and OLE/ActiveX" Web Tools, March 18, 1999 "EJB: Reusability in the Enterprise" InformationWeek, Sept. 14, 1998 "Corba Takes Off" InternetWeek, Sept. 10, 1998 "CORBA 3.0 Eases Object Development" Information Week, June 29, 1998 "DCOM: No Objects In Sight"

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Although the Object Management Group's CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) has existed since 1990 and many products support it on some level, it has long been criticized as being too low-level for anyone but highly specialized engineers to use. Microsoft Corp.'s model, which includes COM (Component Object Model), DCOM (Distributed COM) and the upcoming COM+, has a huge installed base and is more mature than Sun's nascent EJB; but while COM and DCOM have a fairly healthy third-party market for tools, they still primarily require users to run Microsoft tools on Microsoft platforms. Meanwhile, despite the fact that relatively few development tools are currently available for Sun's EJB, it has generated strong interest both from vendors and the market. If that interest turns into robust tool sets and truly interoperable, cross-platform products from multiple vendors, it will become a major force to reckon with.

Customers understand the message of object orientation and its benefits, as well as the need for a distributed object technology, says Roseanna Marchetti, senior product marketing manager at Netscape Communications Corp., so vendors don't need to sell the benefits of components. Rather, they must sell complete products and development tools that are easy to implement, use and reuse across whatever network architecture, infrastructure and OS their clients use. Here, CORBA faces its biggest hurdle. The technology proved too difficult to use in many instances, and too complex and expensive to implement and maintain. Although parts of its core technologies undoubtedly will remain vital to many distributed object deployments, and many products will continue to support CORBA in some form, it has likely hit its high-water mark as a separate, integrated model.

By comparison, Microsoft provided a relatively easy-to-use alternative with DCOM and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), and has quickly gained a large share of the market, if not of the revenue; after all, Microsoft delivers the service free, as a part of the Windows NT OS. It remains to be seen if EJB, or a merger of EJB and CORBA, can overcome Microsoft's lead.