[Pipet Devel] gui protocol revisited

[J.W. Bizzaro]

I think the GUI-to-core *API* that Brad and I have been developing for Loci is
very nice.  It's a simple dialog of request, approval, and pointing to data. 
But what I am questioning is the *protocol* used, which is a standard TCP/IP
socket.

Commands from Loci's XML-based API are streamed across a socket.  Here is a
short example where the GUI (front) requests the addition of a new workspace
(subnet), and the core (middle) performs the addition and approves a change in
the GUI to reflect what the core has done:

<front>
  <add_workspace>
    <workspace id='' >
    </workspace>
  </add_workspace>
</front>
<middle>
  <success>
    <workspace id='workspace1' >
    </workspace>
  </success>
</middle>

So, once again, this API is XML-based and ran through a socket.  My question
is: Should we use CORBA instead?  What are the advantages/disadvantages?  My
MAJOR interest is that we have multiple UIs that can be attached to (and
controlled by) a single core, can run concurrently in the same session, and
can be controlled by one-another (via the front-request, middle-approve API). 
Can we do that with CORBA?

Thoughts?

Jeff
-- 
                      +----------------------------------+
                      |           J.W. Bizzaro           |
                      |                                  |
                      | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ |
                      |                                  |
                      |        BIOINFORMATICS.ORG        |
                      |           The Open Lab           |
                      |                                  |
                      |    http://bioinformatics.org/    |
                      +----------------------------------+