Re: COM on mac

FROM : Mike Jackson
DATE : Tue Jan 14 22:34:43 2003

I am new to Cocoa also, but doesn't Distributed Objects cover this exactly?

http://cocoadevcentral.com/pipermail/cocoa-pro/2002-August/000055.html

And assuming you have the Developer tools on your computer...

file:///Developer/Documentation/Cocoa/TasksAndConcepts/ProgrammingTopics/Dis
trObjects/index.html

Alternately on the web...

http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Cocoa/TasksAndConcepts/Programmin
gTopics/Misc/IACPage.html

Will get you started.

Not sure why this was not mentioned....

Mike

On 1/14/03 14:31, "Andy Satori" <<email_removed>> wrote:

> Let's say for example, I have a server business object, or application,
> called, 'CAB'.    It's running over there on the machine called 'AppServ'.
>
> Let's say that Hypothetical application exposes a method called
> 'GetVendorList' that takes the parameters 'ProductType' and returns a
> recordset of Vendors that offer the products meeting the producttype
> criteria.  Now, just for the sake of compatability, we'll just say that both
> machines are Mac machines, let's not introduce the Windows <-> Mac COM mess
> into this.
>
> In the Windows world, you would use that remote object via COM/DCOM with the
> following code: (I'm using VB for simplicity of the example, it's true in
> any language, the syntax and complexity varies greatly)
>
> Dim obj as CAB
> Dim RS as ADODB.RecordSet
>
> Set CAB = CreateObject("CAB", "AppServer")
> Set RS = CAB.GetVendorList("books")
>
> Now, the same methodology applies locally for objects and applications as
> well, but let's just use the remote methodology for giggles.
>
> From what I can tell, using Cocoa, and Objective C, the NSMutableArray of
> NSDictionary elements is as close to the recordset as you'll get.  No
> biggie, I get that.  What I don't get is a real world example of the 'I want
> to create an instance of an application or framework for use in my
> application on a remote machine and call it's methods'.
>
> Now, I've used AppleScript to do a limited amount of this on the local
> machine,  using Mail, iCal, AddressBook, and Entourage to accomplish some of
> these tasks via AppleScript isn't very difficult (if some of the syntax
> isn't a little confusing, I still can't figure out how to determine if a
> Todo item from iCal is 'completed' since "if completion date of aTodo is not
> null then" doesn't work).  That's dandy, but how do I know take that concept
> and apply it to the Objective C environment and distribute it across a pair
> of machines?
>
> I might add that Apple Events probably come second nature to an old Mac
> programmer that came from the Toolbox, through Carbon to Cocoa, but coming
> to Cocoa, from Win32 introduces wrinkles that you probably are overlooking.
>
> One of those is that we are apparently spoiled to having a lot of the
> boilerplate code of remoting objects and applications hidden for us by some
> smart if inelegant tools.  Please don't get me wrong, I love my Mac, but
> there are paradigm shifts in the development methodology that are painful,
> and that's coming from someone who is comfortable with both Unix and IPC, as
> well as doing low level Win32 stuff.  I can do all of the remoting in C++
> too, but I don't see any clear documentation of how to take the COM concepts
> and apply them here.  The closest I've found is to forego a native method
> and use CORBA with all of it's overhead, or build a Cocoa Java layer and use
> the Java remoting tools.
>
> Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree.  Ultimately I suspect the Rendezvous
> is going to help this situation, but as far as I can tell, it helps with the
> discovery process, but doesn't provide any tools for abstracting away from
> having to write a full client and server TCP implementation using BSD
> sockets, and making the decisions that that kind of design entails.
>
> Here's to hoping that I'm wrong.
> Andy
>
> On 1/14/03 2:04 PM, "matt neuburg" <<email_removed>> pounded the keyboard
> to produce:
>

>> On Mon, 13 Jan 2003 13:20:34 -0500, Andy Satori <<email_removed>> said:
>>

>>> That said, if someone else can provide a pointer to a real
>>> world example of automating an external application from
>>> Cocoa, I'd like to see it as well

>>
>> I'm having some trouble grasping what it is that you don't understand,
>> perhaps
>> because I've been using a Mac for so long that for someone to come along and
>> claim not to understand Apple events is like seeing someone try to talk into
>> the mouse. If you don't know about Apple events then what's a Mac for? :) The
>> best introduction to Apple events is (in my not particularly humble opinion)
>> the first few pages of the chapter on driving external applications in my
>> Frontier book, which you can read online. I have posted code here before
>> showing how to send Apple events from a Cocoa application easily, so check
>> the
>> archives. And of course this is what AppleScript Studio is *all* about so one
>> thing you could do is just read the tutorial for that. There are lots of
>> books
>> and web sites about AppleScript too. m.
>>
>> matt neuburg, phd = <email_removed>, http://www.tidbits.com/matt
>> pantes anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei
>> Subscribe to TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com/

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