Replies

Counter example:
Interoperability between applications on a single system. The Unix shell. From a simple shell script, I can call any other program written in any other language, and I can pipeline output from one to the other.
Interoperability between applications on multiple platforms. XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI.

Note that neither example mentions Microsoft. The later works because it is a service oriented architecture. In fact, hundreds (of thousands ) of non-Windows based systems can interoperate this way independent of .NET.

So what does .NET offer? Interoperability between applications callable from the .NET framework (the framework only runs on Windows). Again, that is not a bad thing, it is just a Microsoft only thing, and that is why I disagreed with the way you phrased your statements.

This is a response to your #395, which I did not see as I was writing my #394.

"Counter example:

Interoperability between applications on a single system. The Unix shell. From a simple shell script, I can call any other program written in any other language, and I can pipeline output from one to the other. Interoperability between applications on multiple platforms. XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI."

On the Unix shell, even you mention that is not "cross-platform" so I'll leave your comment on that as is.

On XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI, this is all XML and its related technologies which provides a very powerful, indeed revolutionary, alternative to other programming languages and, yes, it is truly cross-platform in its capabilities. But two points follow from identifying these XML-related technologies. First; IBM, Red Hat, and others are trying to limit the full use of XML Web Services (WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI come in here) by stressing RPC-style Web Services (limited in scope) as opposed to Document-Style (unlimited capabilities). IBM's WebSphere Application Server does not contain the JAXP Java API as a quick example and you will find no IBM tutorials on doing Document-Style web services at IBM's DeveloperWorks web site. It is .NET that is fully-enabling XML. XML is not a counter-example to .NET because the .NET APIs are actually XML schemas themselves.

But what about all the legacy code written in Java, RPG, Perl, COBOL, and many other languages that is still a fully-functional part of the business processes of many companies that is residing on their (non-Windows) servers? How can that application code be accessed across platforms without the construction of a specific application server whose installation is required on each separate machine? .NET provides the answer with its Common Language Runtime, OLE DB data providers, and XML-Schema-Based APIs.

.NET's solution not only maximizes the cross-platform potential of XML and XML Web Services - and your examples were meaningful in this respect - it also provides access to regular application code already installed and running on non-Windows platforms.