Interoperability and .NET

by Damien Watkins (Monash University)

Wednesday 12 Jun 2002, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

500/1-001 - Main Auditorium (CERN)

Over the last decade a number of Component Based Architectures (CBAs) have been developed to facilitate language interoperability. The most widely known and used of these would be the Object Management Group's (OMG's) Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) and Distributed COM (DCOM). Although not specifically designed to provide language interoperability, many Java based technologies, such as Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), also adhere to the principles of a CBA. Microsoft's .NET Framework is the latest CBA to be developed and builds on many of the lessons learnt from previous architectures. Interoperability is a core facility of the .NET Framework. The .NET framework achieves language interoperability via the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The .NET framework also provides architecture interoperability via two mechanisms: COM Interoperability and Web Services. This talk firstly will give an architectural overview of the .NET Framework and explain how language interoperability is achieved within the CLR. Then we will look at how architecture interoperability is achieved with both COM Interoperability and Web Services. Attendees will not need to be familiar with any CBA. Bio: Dr Damien Watkins is the founder and Managing Director of Project 42, a company that provides consultancy, training, mentoring and strategic analysis on component-based software development for the Internet. Prior to commencing Project 42 Damien lectured at the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering and the Department of Software Development at Monash University. Damien lectured both postgraduate and undergraduate subjects, covering the areas of Component Based Software Development and Distributed Object Oriented Technologies. Damien taught the world's first .NET Framework course at Monash University . He has also taught at Uppsala University (Sweden) and KMITNB (Thailand).