CORBA vs JNI vs Wev Service

Question

Hi All,
We need to expose some functionality from module running under MS Windows and written entirely in C/C++ to another module written in Java (possibly working in a separate machine). Therefore, we are facing the problem of how to connect our two modules. I think the major options are:
- CORBA
- JNI
- Web service
but still not sure which one of them to choose. Exposing a web service for c++ module is not going to be a big problem for us since we can make a little wrapper in C# (using .net) which will be the actual web service and the java module will be the client. We allready finished a little project using for the same purposes web service but there were some difficulties the major of them was the long answer time for the server (> 30sec.) which is hardly acceptable for web services.
I will be very glad to hear more opinions, thanks in advance.
Dimitar

Answer 1

CORBA requires that an ORB be available to both client and server. There are free ones (e.g., Mico), but usually they're a for-fee item. I believe CORBA can be made to go through firewalls, but I've not done it. I've used it on Intranets. It uses a proprietary protocol. Both client and server have to CORBA-enabled.
I believe JNI requires that the C++ code and the Java client be running on the same machine.
You could use RMI to wrap the module, but that would require Java for both client and server. It's similar to CORBA, but more restrictive on language choices.
Web services are similar to CORBA, except they use SOAP XML over HTTP. They don't have a problem going through firewalls, and the protocol is more widespread.
Is the long answer time due to the network latency, the SOAP message parsing, marshalling/unmarshalling, or the execution time of the C++ module itself? If it's the module execution time, maybe you need an asynchronous solution instead of an RPC.