Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.sather,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!news.mathworks.com!news.kei.com!wang!news
From: yogi@csa.cs.technion.ac.il (Yossi Gil)
Subject: Re: Summary of COOTS 95 (previously Usenix C++ workshop)
Organization: Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 12:16:19 GMT
Message-ID: <yogi.805551379@csa>
References: <DAGENAIS.95Jul3123357@notung.vlsi.polymtl.ca>
Sender: news@wang.com
Lines: 179
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.object:34912 comp.lang.modula3:4247 comp.lang.c++:137976 comp.lang.eiffel:9508 comp.lang.sather:1971 comp.lang.ada:32493 comp.lang.smalltalk:25776

I wonder why this message was not posted also to comp.lang.eiffel,
comp.lang.sather,  comp.lang.smalltalk and comp.lang.ada.

I would have not mentioned this if it was not the second time this
occurs in conjunction with this conference. The CFP was again in
limited distribution. I am sure that it is not the case that the
change in name from C++ to OO was just for the end of politicial
correctness. 

At any rate, I am cross posting this to other news groups whose
readers may be interested in this.

dagenais@notung.vlsi.polymtl.ca (Michel Dagenais) writes:


>I just came back from what used to be called the Usenix C++ workshop
>and here is a summary of my impressions, for those interested.

>This conference was held in Monterey (near San Francisco) last week.
>The new name is COOTS, Usenix Conference on Object Oriented Technologies,
>and reflects a greater emphasis on other OO languages and on technologies
>like distributed objects. There were about 175 attendees.

>The keynote address by Michael Powell of SunSoft discussed the evolution
>of CORBA. He explained that things are evolving slowly but nicely towards
>distributed objects components albeit everyone would have liked a complete
>solution from the day of the announcement of the project. When asked,
>he explained that object servers (ORB) from various vendors would need
>bridges to interoperate since they use the same object model but
>different "wire" protocols. There is also a "standard" wire protocol
>which may be incorporated as a bridge in many object servers.
>He acknowledged problems with C++ for memory management and safety
                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Isn't this what the Eiffel people were saying all the time?

>of migrated code, using Modula-3 and Java as examples of cleaner
>languages more amenable to such tasks.

>The following technical presentations followed on Wednesday and Thursday.

>- Simple Activation for Distributed Objects
>          Ann Wollrath, Geoff Wyant and Jim Waldo, Sun Microsystems Labs

>A daemon to start Modula-3 network objects servers.

>- Dynamic Insertion of Object Services
>          Ajay Mohindra and Murthy Devarakonda, IBM T.J. Watson Research
>          Center; George Copeland, IBM Austin

>A scheme to dynamically inherit services (data members and methods)
>in C++ objects.

>- Object-Oriented Components for High-speed Network Programming
>          Douglas C. Schmidt and Tim Harrison, Washington University, St.
>          Louis

>They compare the performance of sending medical images through C sockets,
>C++ socket wrappers, and through object servers (ORB) from Orbix and
>ORBeline. On ATM networks the performance varies a lot and demonstrates
>the importance of tuning system calls, buffer sizes...

>- Program Explorer: A Program Visualizer for C++
>          Danny B. Lange and Yuichi Nakamura, IBM Research, Tokyo
>          Research Laboratory

>Graphical tool to help understanding complex libraries such as InterViews.

>- Configuration Management in an Object-Oriented Database
>          Mick Jordan and Michael Van DeVanter, Sun Microsystems Labs

>Uses an OO database for sophisticated configuration management control.
>The underlying model is inspired from the VESTA system implemented in
>Modula-3 at DEC SRC.

>- Debugging Storage Management Problems in Garbage-Collected
>          Environments
>          Dave Detlefs and Bill Kaslow, Digital Equipment Corporation,
>          Systems Research Center

>Even in garbage collected environments, it is possible to allocate too
>much memory or to keep live pointers to uneeded objects. Tools to study
>memory usage of Modula-3 programs were described.

>- COOL Languages (Content-Oriented Object Languages) for the Web
>          Panel Chair: Ted Goldstein

>James Gosling from Sun described Java, Luca Cardelli from DEC SRC described
>Obliq and Antony Courtney presented Phantom. Java is an OO language
>with separate interfaces and implementation, garbage collection,
>safety, and a C++ like syntax, recently being pushed by Sun as a C++
>replacement, in particular for distributed applications. Obliq is
>a Modula-3 like language with closures for distributed applications.
>It uses Modula-3 network objects and may be embedded in Modula-3
>applications. Phantom is an extended (closures) subset (no opaque types)
>of Modula-3, for distributed applications; it is written in ANSI C.

>- Phantom: An Interpreted Language for Distributed Programming
>          Antony Courtney, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

>More on Phantom, already discussed in the previous Panel discussion.

>- A Framework for Higher-Order Functions in C++
>          Konstantin Laufer, Loyola University of Chicago

>Adding closures and lambda functions to C++ through a library
>of templates.

>- Lingua-Franca: An IDL for Structural Subtyping Distributed Object
>          Systems
>          Patrick Muckelbauer and Vincent F. Russo, Purdue University

>An interface description language for a distributed operating system.

>- COM and CORBA
>          Panel Chair: Mark Linton
>          Panelists: To Be Announced

>CORBA and COM vendors debated the respective merits of these systems.
>The conclusion may be that they are fairly similar. Indeed, the COM
>proponent had copied (FTP) his opponent presentation and reused the
>same slides with a number of small annotations describing the differences.

>- Adding Group Communication and Fault-Tolerance to CORBA
>          Silvano Maffeis, Cornell University

>Building distributed objects over a system such as ISIS or Horus to insure
>fault tolerant message passing (including multicasts and message
>groups where all or none are delivered).

>- Using Meta-Objects to Support Optimisation in the Apertos Operating
>          System
>          Jun-ichiro Itoh, Keio University; Yashuhiko Yokote and Rodger
>          Lea, Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Tokyo

>The benefits and costs of using a rich meta object model.

>- The Spring Object Model
>          Sanjay Radia, Graham Hamilton, Peter Kessler and Michael L.
>          Powell, SunSoft, Inc.

>Spring is an OO micro kernel developed at Sun Labs. It is now in use
>for its own development since a few months. It uses an IDL
>(interface description language) to allow objects to interact
>with local processes and remote processes transparently.

>- Integration of Concurrency Control in a Language with Subtyping and
>          Subclassing
>          Carlos Baquero, Rui Oliveira and Francisco Moura, Universidade
>          do Minho, Portugal

>A new C++ like language with extensions for concurrency control.

>- Generic Containers for a Distributed Object Store
>          Carsten Weich, Universitaet Klagenfurt, Austria

>Modula-3 templates for object types needed to build object stores.

>- Media-Independent Interfaces in a Media-Dependent World
>          Ken Arnold, Sun Microsystems Laboratories; Kee Hinckley,
>          Utopia, Inc.; Eric Sheinbrood, Wildfire Communications

>An OO architecture to interface several input sources (tone detection,
>voice, keyboard input) and outputs (sound, screen) to interaction
>scripts. This is useful to build computer/phone integrated applications.


>There was only one BOF, on Modula-3.
>--

>Prof. Michel Dagenais        http://www.vlsi.polymtl.ca/dagenais/home/home.html
>Dept of EE and Computer Eng.        dagenais@vlsi.polymtl.ca
>Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal     tel: (514) 340-4029

-- 
Joseph (Yossi) Gil                               yogi@CS.Technion.AC.IL
The Faculty of Computer Science             yogi@NeXT.CS.Technion.AC.IL
Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology          Tel: +972-4-29-4333
Technion City, Haifa 32000, Israel                  Fax: +972-4-29-4353
