[520] in java-interest
Some questions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ian S Eslick)
Tue Jun 27 16:40:35 1995
From: beethovn@ai.mit.edu (Ian S Eslick)
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 95 15:59:20 EDT
To: java-interest@java.sun.com
Several things have popped up while I've been looking into Java (just
discovered it a week ago) and I was curious who else out there might
have been thinking along the same lines. The most important one I see
right now is that:
The dynamic class binding system has some pretty strong potentials for
namespace conflicts in anything but the most trivial and organized
environment. I believe the dynamic class binding resolution scheme
limits the growth of Java applications in the long run. (Also makes
my work much harder!)
Say, for example, if I were to define a package like, 'nets' with some
classes that dealt with graph matching engines that operate on package
classes describing semantic nets. I have a server and download my
applet to a client who locally has defined a different 'nets' package
for dealing with, say a tennis game they were writing. How to resolve
this?
Well in the current representation, where the initial class reference
is merely a string, there is no way and the following problem flags as
a security violation when it really is a namespace violation (correct
me if I'm wrong here).
A far more flexible and extensible way to handle name resolution might
be to extend the compiler and dynamic linker to use a name resolution
system based on more than a package.class type string - the feedback
I've gotten suggests URN's as a much better mechanism. It would be
much more supportive of Java's evolution as a global and distributed
language supporting distributed computation and coding. A URN is much
more specific than a bare package.class string leaving much more
flexibility for an application to define what it really depends on.
Enough said for now - mail me if you have responses or suggestions or
you are a Java developer with an opinion on either of these concerns. :)
Thanks,
Ian Eslick
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