Subject: Re: CCL:Sequence Classes and CORBA Servers

From: "Peter Shenkin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 13:54:29 -0500

On Nov 11,  9:54am, Bill Kraus wrote:
> Subject: CCL:Re: CCL:Sequence Classes and CORBA Servers

> I must add my support to what Konrad is saying. As a commercial software
> developer who has written bioinformatics apps (e.g. MacVector, AssemblyLIGN)
> as well as others (e.g. Adobe PageMill), and as someone who has been
> architecting systems using OO technology for the last ten years (even doing
> time at the ill-fated Taligent effort), using OO technology is no guarantee.
> In fact, it's been my experience that there is a significant risk to
> standardizing object interfaces - the resulting APIs can either be too
> constraining or so generalized as to be useless.

I also agree with this, having considered the use of the ASN.1
structures defined by NCBI for use in general-purpose molecular
modeling and having participated to some extent in the CEX effort
a few years back.

Still, there are two aspects of such technologies:  the syntactical/
methodological and the semantic.  The "consortium" approach to
standardizing interfaces or object classes or data structures for
a particular field of use seeks to define semantics, or at least
should seek to do so!  This is often not as successful as one might
hope for the reasons Bill mentioned.

However, the underlying infrastructure might still be highly useful
for one's own purposes, even if the object or data-structure definitions
are your own private ones.  And, if you made enough of what you've
done visible (ASN.1 syntax, for example), and make the semantics
clear to your users, then your users can also use the technology
to interface other applications with your own.

Thus, I'm more interested in using CORBA, ASN.1 and similar technologies
myself, as I see fit, using my own definitions, than in buying into
the defintions provided by a consortium or external organization.  Even in
this more limited context, the technologies themselves are very powerful.

	-P.

-- 
****************** Sir Isaiah Berlin, 1909 - 1997, RIP ********************
* Peter S. Shenkin; Chemistry, Columbia U.; 3000 Broadway, Mail Code 3153 *
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