MS moving from OOP to message passing?

[Luke Gorrie]

"Marc van Woerkom" <Marc.Vanwoerkom@REDACTED> writes:

>    The problem with most distributed object technologies, Box
> said, is that programs require particular class files or  .jar   files
> (referring to Java), or .dll files  (Microsoft's
>    own dynamic linked libraries). "We didn't have (a) true
> arms-length relationship between programs," Box said.  "We were
> putting on an appearance that we did, but the  programs had far more
> intimacy with each other than anyone    felt comfortable with."

There's an interesting paper about the tendency of distributed
programming models to be crappy at
http://research.sun.com/techrep/1994/abstract-29.html

Interestingly they include message-passing as an example of an
over-done technology. I'm not sure what systems they have in mind.

Anyway, it's really good that Microsoft are instilling some sanity in
the world with SOAP-based message passing. I've just written my first
SOAP client and boy will my life be easy as soon as I've figured out
which of these four protocol layers is causing the remote server to
print "Bad Message" and then crash whenever I try to talk to it...

-Luke (debugging SOAP with pencil and printout)