The ANSAweb stub-compiler

ANSA is pleased to announce a prototype version of their ANSAweb stub-compiler for World Wide Web applications. ANSAweb is intended to assist those writing Common Gateway Interface programms for the World-Wide Web.

Starting from a CORBA IDL definition of the service to be offered by a CGI program, the ANSAweb stub-compiler generates:

1. Web client stubs, encapsulating libwww (the underlying library used by many WWW applications)
2. CGI program server stubs, to unmarshal incoming data
3. a generic template HTML form, with entries for parameters which is consistent with the corresponsing CGI server program.

As a result, the programmer has to do much less bookkeeping and programmer productivity goes up.

The basis for this approach was established in the ANSA Workprogramme. Recent discussions on the http-wg lists, i.e. the IETF working group for HTTP, suggested this might be a possible way forward for the web too.

The sponsors of the ANSA Workprogramme have been funding this idea for some time and we have decided to make a snapshot of the current source code for the ANSAweb stub-compiler available by anonymous ftp so as to encourage developments which bring the Web and CORBA technologies closer together.

The ANSAweb stub-compiler is prototype code which runs on HPUX 9.01 (an early version was ported to Solaris by colleagues at France Telecom). It has been tested with CERN HTTPD 3.0. It is being made available without any waranties, and in source form to enable recipients to undertake experiments and porting.

Converted from text 15 Sep 1995 by webmaster@ansa.co.uk