# com in Mac-X????



## ram (Apr 19, 2001)

Hi All,
Any idea whether Mac supports anthing similar to Microsofts COM??
Or everything has to use only raw RPC???

thnx


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## spike666 (Apr 19, 2001)

the one thing that comes to mind is Java.  Now that OSX runs a current JVM (1.3.x) you would be able to run a very robust Java object model, including i would imagine a full J2EE system which would allow you to do full EJB remote object (EJB = COM+/MTS, straight Javabeans = COM)

heck, right now i've got apache jakarta Tomcat running to do javabeans!  which totally rocks btw...


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## rharder (Apr 19, 2001)

I guess AppleEvents are similar.

I've not yet seen what the OS X equivalent of ActiveX, COM, etc is. I sure hope there's something nifty like it though.

-Rob


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## ladavacm (Apr 19, 2001)

Well, (D)COM is a ripoff of DCE/RPC.  OMG Corba is a successor   There are many ORBs floating around.

For hardcore UNIXers, fork(2), execve(2), and socketpair(2) et. al. have been doing the job for the last 20+ years, and are available under MOSX, as well.


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## rharder (Apr 20, 2001)

Yeah, but it would be nice to have something as easy to implement as ActiveX communication.

Sure we'd prefer it not be some proprietary nonsense, since there <em>are</em> legitimate open standards for such things, but seriously, have you ever tried to set up your own JavaSpaces? J2EE server? It would be so much nicer if there was a system-supported communication standard (which there may be--I don't know).

Even nicer would be if some of these standards like CORBA could be the "native" language for OS X high-level communication.

-Rob


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## strobe (Apr 25, 2001)

That's a horrible idea. CORBA is the most bloated method imaginable. ugh.

If you're interested in COM look at CoreFoundation plugins, they follow the COM API.


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## rharder (Apr 25, 2001)

Okay, maybe not CORBA, but <em>something</em> standardized. Not another proprietary protocol, please.

-Rob


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## fchang (May 15, 2001)

From what I know, Objective C has features which are very similar to COM.  If you want DCOM-like features, I think Objective C has them, too, although I have not looked too much into it.

On the other hand, new standards like SOAP are emerging which will provide DCOM-like solutions across platforms, which are worth looking into.


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## goron (Jun 11, 2001)

Objective C does indeed do what [D]COM does. 
Java (javabeans,EJB) does it too.

Both far more elegantly that COM

MS has seen the light here and followed the Java model with .NET/C# so you may see that as an endorsement.


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## shtjonathan (Jun 28, 2001)

At lasts WWDC someone from Apple said that NSBundle is actually a lightweight implementation of COM. So you might take a look at NSBundle.

Good luck,


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## strobe (Jun 29, 2001)

The COM interfaces may only be in CFBundle however. Thus my previous suggestion.


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