CORBA and VB.NET

Hello All,

Has anyone heard the words "VB.NET" and "CORBA" mentioned in the same sentence (other than one along the lines of "VB.NET and CORBA get along as well as cats and dogs")?

In seriousness though, does anyone know if it is possible to write something in VB.NET that runs over CORBA ORB?

I've tried searching for information about this on this site and using google and my strong suspicion is that they don't get along too well (at all) - but i've not been able to confirm this.

I'm writing an application that really needs to be able to run cross platform, ie it will have some sort of central repository and gui rinning on a windows pc, but it will want to be able to gather information from other windows and unix pcs (and perhaps ultimately MVS mainframes). As far as i know CORBA is you best bet for trying anything as ludicrous as this, and as VB is my fave language it would thrill me to bits if i were able to combine VB and CORBA.

Thanks enormously for any help / advice / criticism,

You're gonna have to wait for someone (or yourself) to produce a CLR for whatever OS you want.

I think right now teams are building for Linux and OS/2.

sorry, at the risk of sounding naive, what's CLR? (besides an industrial strength kitchen and bathroom cleaner here in australia)?

Thanks for replying...

Like in VB you have the VB runtimes (msvbm.dll or whatever it's called). In .NET you have the Common Language Runtimes to make your program run.

oh ok, great that explains it. Right so that would enable whatever i write (in VB.NET) to run on the, say, unix platform.

What i'm still not sure on is whether a can write a component (in the architectural sense of the word, not a textbox) in VB.NET and make it CORBA compliant so that it can talk to other corba components via an ORB.

Perhaps an example will better explain.

I would most likely have the central repository and gui (written in VB.NET?? - hopefully) running on a pc connected to a network. This network will also be connected to other unix platforms. On one of these platforms i would have another corba component running that does some funky monitoring and stuff, colecting data, and then can talk back to the central repository and gui on the pc. This relies on me being able to write a CORBA client / server using VB.NET...

I'm sure the answer is that "you can't" but thats based on instinct, not knowledge...

Thanks

funky

I really don't know to much about what's going to happen as far as cross-platform development and what restrictions you'll have.

One, I'm sure of is using the API. You're not going to be able to do that since it's Windows based. I think as long as you stick to what the CLR gives you, you oughta be safe. That's also considering that whoever writes the CLR for the platform you're using includes it, too.

Kinda confusing. Feel free to ask any other questions. :)

Is The CLR and the Framework Limmited to only Visual Studio or will companies like Borland be able to Implement the Framework?

Yea anyone can develop a CLR for whatever OS and have .NET apps run using it. It's not a 2 day project or anything, though.