[ale] .NET

[Mike Millson]

It 
sounds like a rip off of Java's JNDI.

  -----Original 
  Message-----From: Dennany, Jerome {D177~Roswell} 
  [mailto:JEROME.DENNANY at ROCHE.COM]Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 
  1:26 PMTo: ALECc: 'Eric Anderson'Subject: RE: 
  [ale] .NET
  >I skimmed the article and it was interesting, but I am 
  still a bit >confused about something. If I create 
  a set of class in a language that >supports 
  multiple inheritance (C++, Eiffel, Perl) and use multiple <FONT 
  size=2>>inheritance, then according to what you said (and my skimming of 
  the >article) I would not be able to have 
  interoperability to another >language (i.e. have C# 
  code make calls to my classes) since I would have <FONT 
  size=2>>to run that code "unmanaged". 
  No, this isn't quite it.  There would be 
  interoperability, but since the CLS does not support multiple inheritance, the 
  'borders' at which APIs or public interfaces or methods are exposed must be 
  exposed in a manner that is consistant with the CLS.  For example, if you 
  wrote a class library that used genericity or multiple inheritance internally, 
  that would be fine, as long as those classes were not exposed as public.  
  Perhaps you'd write accessor classes or some wrapper type.
  The best example is probably a C# example:Â  C# allows 
  unsigned ints (through the uint type).  Code written with uints is fine, 
  as long as they are not made public accross language boundaries.  (IE, if 
  a VB.NET program tried to use a method that accepted a uint as a parameter, 
  we'd have problems.  VB.NET does not support the uint type).
  Notice that we haven't even touched on managed / unmanaged 
  code yet.  We are just talking about access modifiers (public, private, 
  etc).
  So, you can do whatever you want "inside" your code, just be 
  careful that what you expose is CLS compliant. 
  >So basically I can program so that my code conforms to the 
  Virtual >Object System model of what an object 
  looks like OR run my code as >unmanaged and 
  therefore loose the advantages of running under .NET since <FONT 
  size=2>>my code is no longer accessible by other languages. Can my 
  "unmanaged" >code call "managed" code (possibly 
  written in another language)? 
  I think that we're losing track of what "managed" means - it 
  primarily refers to memory management and garbage collection, not the type 
  system.
  But to anwer your question, yes, "unmanaged" code may call 
  "managed" code, and vice versa.  Quite a bit of work has been put into 
  the framework to automatically handle marshalling across the framework 
  boundaries through various interop classes.  COM can call .NET Code, .NET 
  code can call COM code, .NET code can call C-stype APIs, C++ can mix managed 
  and unmanaged code, etc...  Pretty flexible.
  >Excuse my ignorance, but I have not read up on .NET as 
  much as I would >like to. 
  Of course, take everything I've said with a grain of salt - I 
  don't claim to be the expert in everything, either... 
  Jerry Dennany