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From: Yourname@somwhere.COM (Your Name)
Subject: Smalltalk/CORBA experiences dialog...
Organization: Somewhere
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 13:42:59 GMT
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Industri-Matematik is currently evaluating various "modern"
technologies on which to base the next generation of our main
product - an enterprise level logistics/order management package.

Since the beginning of '95, we have spent a considerable amount
of time investigating a distributed object platform based on Smalltalk
and CORBA.  We originally pursued the use of C++ for actual 
"distributed" objects, but our (very positive) experiences with 
Smalltalk have led to a strong desire to use it across the
board i.e. to develop our CORBA objects in Smalltalk.

Our initial efforts in this direction resulted in prototype 
applications developed using VisualWorks and HP DST.  The 
applications work, they work well, but they are SLOW (too slow
for our needs)!  Thus we have been forced to tweak their design
in various ways to increase performance.

The performance of the apps HAS increased, but at the cost of
unsightly and (rather) unwieldy application architectures that
sacrifice the beauty and promise of a real distributed object 
solution (for performance).

We are aware that there are many others pursuing and/or employing
a development platform based on Smalltalk and CORBA, and are
very interesting in starting a frank dialog with any and all (serious)
developers to exchange experiences with this technology.  We
can be contacted using the E-mail address below.


Michael Meadows
Advanced Technologies Group
Industri-Matematik
mime@im.se  

