Re: EOF - was (Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa) )
Re: EOF - was (Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa) )
- Subject: Re: EOF - was (Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa) )
- From: "David W. Halliday" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 09:16:44 -0500
- Organization: TNRCC
William Moss wrote:
>
Kevin Callahan - email@hidden writes:
>
>Is there really no chance in hell
>
>that Apple will bring EOF/ObjC back
>
>to the platform?
>
>
I don't think anyone outside of Apple, and maybe outside of Steve Jobs can
>
answer this. I'm not certain that the real reasons for canning the EOF were
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made public.
>
>
Maybe it was for technical reasons. ...
The fact that they are still doing it in a (slightly) technically inferior
language (Java) suggests this is not the case. (There are technically superior
languages I would like Cocoa to evolve toward, but keeping Objective-C for C
compatibility [and, similarly, Objective-C++ for C++ compatibility] will likely be a
good move for the foreseeable future.)
>
Maybe it was for political reasons. Perhaps with Larry Ellison's influence
>
on Steve convinced him that database vendors weren't going to bring their
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databases to Mac OS X if there was a standard technology that allowed
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developers to flit between one database and another going and turning db
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products into a commodity.
Possibly the most likely, in my estimation, considering the following.
>
Maybe it was for economic reasons: Maybe Apple thought that rolling its own
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technology to do what EOF does was a bad idea if they could leverage off of
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other technologies like JDBC and ODBC standards rather than forcing yet
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another Apple-proprietary standard onto the market. Many commercial
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databases didn't write EOF adapters and probably wouldn't willingly do so
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without a big monetary payment from Apple. Perhaps Apple added up all the
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dollar signs that it would take to make EOF a success and just decided it
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wasn't worth it.
When you consider that all one needs to do is create JDBC and ODBC adapters to
solve this issue*, this certainly cannot be the problem. Especially when one
considers that not only can you have JDBC and ODBC, but one can have more custom
adapters, as was pointed out by Scott Anguish <email@hidden>.
>
Of course none of these arguments really make sense once you realize that
>
WebObjects still uses EOF. To me that fact alone says that there's more
>
going on here than will ever be publicly known. (A secret part of the
>
Apple/Microsoft deal? A marketing dictate because EOF sounded too
>
technical? A unfavorable tarot card reading?)
However, the move from Objective-C to Java /does/ have one benefit for Apple:
They can more easily port this "Enterprise" technology to other platforms---at least
the back-end ("Enterprise") portions that have become an ever so popular use of Java
lately. So, the only reason EOF survives is that Apple saw a monetary opportunity
they simply could not ignore, in server applications, by leveraging their EOF
technology. All it took was porting EOF to Java (and dropping the more general
adapter technology, for whatever reason [insert speculation here]). (Furthermore,
by focusing on the back-end server applications they didn't have to port the much
more difficult UI level code. Besides, they could still provide the GUI tools on
their own platform for development, while deploying on a wide variety of platforms.)
>
I'd very much like to see EOF return. My work would be much easier with a
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technology well integrated into Cocoa that does what EOF does. But it's
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foolish for me to wait on it or hope for it. If you want to see EOF (or
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something with EOF functionality) return to Cocoa, write Apple and tell
>
them. But I wouldn't make any plans for a particular timeframe that it
>
might reappear.
>
>
William
email@hidden
* WebObjects Java does use JDBC (though, I think, it has eliminated the ability to
create the custom adapters [which, if it is the case, would support the political
motivation]).
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