From -2391869678007600859 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,fa4c9935954c426 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 113dfb,fa4c9935954c426 X-Google-Attributes: gid113dfb,public X-Google-Thread: f78e5,fa4c9935954c426 X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-Thread: 111308,fa4c9935954c426 X-Google-Attributes: gid111308,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1995-02-28 22:35:37 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!uknet!warwick!news.ncl.ac.uk!nmcl From: Mark Little Newsgroups: comp.client-server,comp.lang.c++,comp.std.c++,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 Subject: Re: Marshalling C++ Objects Date: 28 Feb 1995 14:01:38 GMT Organization: Computing Laboratory, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE17RU Lines: 51 Distribution: world Message-ID: <3ivac2$b4p@whitbeck.ncl.ac.uk> References: <3igf2v$kcd@epsilon.qmw.ac.uk> <3irb98$qj5@picasso.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: glororan.ncl.ac.uk Xref: bga.com comp.client-server:6629 comp.lang.c++:52340 comp.std.c++:7035 comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32:9548 In article <3irb98$qj5@picasso.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>, Greg Wilkins writes: >tariqh@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Tariq Hamid) wrote: >> >> How do you marshal/unmarshal C++ objects. It appears to be a difficult problem >> as the inheritance hierarchy has to be considered. >> > >There are several techniques for doing it in C++ code (with or >without the assistance of horrid macros). But all a a bit manual >and prone to some degree of error. In Arjuna, which is a set of tools for building fault-tolerant distributed applications in C++, we have a stub generation tool which automates a great deal of this. It works on the standard C++ class definition, and generates marshalling/unmarshalling code for fairly complex objects (lists of arbitrary complexity, other classes, etc), and does this transparently. The only difference between using a local and remove object is a single line change in the application (basically to include the stub header instead of the real object). Although manual intervention is possible and necessary in some cases, we've found this to be a useful starting point, as have many people who've used the system. If anyone's interested in looking at this, the source for Arjuna can be obtained via anonymous ftp from arjuna.ncl.ac.uk in /pub/Arjuna/Source. This is the whole fault-tolerant system, which the stub generator is only a part of. It's still possible to use it in isolation though. If you're only interested in distributed C++, then drop me a line. > >Hopefully the standard for this will be IDL (CORBA), or some >extension to it for OODBs (ODMG-93). > Certainly for portability and cross-language support, this will be necessary. Mark. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SENDER : Mark Little, PHONE : +44 91 222 8066, FAX : +44 91 222 8232 Arjuna Project, Distributed Systems Research. POST : Department of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU ARPA : M.C.Little@newcastle.ac.uk JANET : M.C.Little@uk.ac.newcastle