Re: Late binding

On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 08:14:05PM -0400, Sam wrote:
> 
> I m looking for a clear and precise definition of early
> and late binding in the context of web services.
> 
> Can anyone help me with that

I can't find any reasonably authoritative source on the term.  I see
that it was used in COM automation (see below), and that use shares
much of the same meaning with its distributed version, which I'm
talking about.

Basically, it refers to the time at which the client code discovers the
type of the thing it's interacting with.

The Web is really late bound, because you don't know what you're dealing
with until after you've invoked GET (most commonly - there are other
ways).  For example, if I gave you any URI, you wouldn't know what it
identified until you entered it into your browser.

For what most people call "Web services", you have to know what you're
dealing with before you use it.  Hence the need for "stubs".

A generic interface is the key to late binding.  Even COM demonstrated
this.  For example;

http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/InterDev/EarlyvsLateBinding.htm

Here, "CreateObject" and "GetObject" comprised the generic interface
for use when late-bound behaviour was desired.  On the Web, GET, PUT,
POST, etc.. comprise that interface.

I hope that was helpful.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile (formerly Planetfred)
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.               distobj@acm.org
http://www.markbaker.ca        http://www.idokorro.com

Received on Tuesday, 25 June 2002 22:18:08 UTC