[Zope-dev] RE: Exposing COM via XML-RPC or Something Else

[Brian Lloyd]

> I'm playing around with a way to expose Windows COM object via
> XML-RPC (or something else).
> 
> Let me explain:
> 
> My first thought was to write an XML-RPC API to expose the MAPI COM
> object and it's methods.
> ...
> So my current question, can anyone think of an existing technology or
> library that will allow me to expose these COM objects in a way that
> could be used by other platforms/languages. Corba (FNORB), ILU, PYRO?
> 
> Or am I really just going a little crazy?

You might want to take a look at MS' SOAP (Simple Object Access 
Protocol) spec - it's not fully baked yet, but it basically takes
xml-rpc several steps further, allowing you to communicate with 
SOAP-enabled objects (COM or otherwise) using XML over HTTP. We in 
Zope-land are keeping a close eye on this, as publishing objects 
via HTTP is the core idea of Zope already. Once the SOAP spec is 
fleshed out enough to implement in Python, it will probably be 
laugably easy not only to implement SOAP objects in Python but also
to wrap most any existing COM objects as SOAP-aware objects.

If you're interested, the current spec is at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/xml/general/soaptemplate.asp


Brian Lloyd        brian@digicool.com
Software Engineer  540.371.6909              
Digital Creations  http://www.digicool.com