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  Sneaking Up On CORBA: The Race for the Ideal Distributed Object Model May 3, 1999 | ||
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Executive Summary Choosing to implement a distributed application is a tough decision; choosing the underlying object model is at least as hard. With its huge installed base, Microsoft's DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) leads the pack. A Microsoft NT shop will pick DCOM because it's so well-integrated into NT. As Microsoft migrates from NT to Windows 2000, DCOM will evolve to COM+ by folding elements, such as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), into the operating system and adding a handful of new services. Regardless of these changes, however, choosing DCOM means choosing Windows, and vice versa. What little support Microsoft provides for other operating systems exists to entice organizations to migrate to the Microsoft model. The granddaddy of the three models, CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), is showing its age. It requires deep, low-level knowledge, and suffers serious compatibility problems from one vendor's product to the next. The scheduled midyear release of CORBA version 3.0 promises several improvements over CORBA 2.0, but many of the new services already exist in Microsoft's DCOM and Sun's Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB). Meanwhile, newcomer EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans), with its promise of strong interoperability, could well be CORBA's savior. With only a handful of third-party applications available, the EJB rollout is destined to be slow. However, elements of CORBA and EJB will likely merge over the coming year. This combination of forces could be both CORBA's and EJB's best hope against Microsoft's DCOM, and your best bet if you seek to avoid getting locked into a Microsoft solution.
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