The software industry has made previous tries at interoperability, although these solutions were incomplete. Here's a look at the most recent attempts.
- CORBA is an interoperability standard with its origin in C/C++ and Unix. Although technically feasible (and provided by third-party software vendors), it excluded Microsoft. CORBA standards did not sufficiently define the details of semantic and syntactic compatibility. As a result, an industry "war" between vendors started, which Iona arguably won.
- Java RMI lets Java systems interoperate. RMI can also interoperate with CORBA through RMI-IIOP. Initially this included all the major players including Sun, BEA, and Microsoft. However, this cooperation was short-lived because of the opposing interests of Sun and Microsoft. When Microsoft no longer participated, Java RMI became useless for interoperating with Microsoft technologies.
- J2EE lets Java-based systems interoperate. J2EE interoperates well with other J2EE environments and also can interoperate through CORBA. However, Microsoft is not part of J2EE interoperability.
- COM, DCOM, MTS, and COM+ are Microsoft technologies that solve the interoperability problems between different systems. DCOM was implemented for Unix systems. However, in reality these systems are feasible only for Microsoft platforms.
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