[tcljava-dev] JACL - Urgent help to make a design decision!

[Fernando M. D. <fda...@uo...>]

Hi! All,

I am about to make a high level design decision for a project 
in the company I work for.

--- Brief:

We currently have a relatively large (12 Kloc) application 
coded in Tcl/Tk/Expect or Expectix. The application provides 
a whole bunch of functionalities to the user via Tk widgets 
and accesses system resources in the backend including 
Socket, File Handling, Spawning external executables, etc.

All this is part of a larger system in the Wireless CDMA 
network management.

Then environment is Sun Solaris.

--- Objective:

Now, we are migrating parts of this larger system into a 
newer one which is Java Client/Server based architecture =96 
including Java/RMI for Client/Server communication.

We have estimated that the application as is today is 
balanced between:

- 1.5 Kloc of Tk front end code (GUI)
- 10.5 Kloc of Tcl/Expect back end code

in a single script file =96 yes, total of 12 Kloc in a single 
program file!...

Needless to say that our first thought was to port the GUI 
part of the application to the Java Client and reuse the 
backend part entirely, with little adjustments, in the 
Server. To accomplish this we would like to implement a 
collection of simple Java/RMI classes =96 basically to map 
remote client calls directly into Tcl procedures - and glue 
them to via Jacl.

So, Jacl would be extremely useful in the sense that:

- Would save a  lot of effort w/o having to port the backend 
code.
- Clean design.
- Would fit as a glove into the new Server system.

--- Questions/Problems:

1 =96 Is this really an approach that Jacl can support.

2 =96 I=92ve noticed that the =93package=94 command =93=85completely 
implemented in Jacl.=94  as stated in the DIFFS.TXT file so, I 
am assuming that I can load the Expect extension by issuing 
the command =93package require Expect=94, is this correct?

3 =96 I=92ve gone through all the commands mentioned in the 
DIFFS.TXT and found that, at least based on what is stated 
there, I can get around those commands listed in =93What 
Partially Works=94 with minor changes in the Tcl code.

4 - I=92ve tried step 2 above in a Jacl shell command line but 
it didn=92t work. If it should work what am I doing wrong?

5 =96 What are the licensing restrictions that may apply to 
using Jacl in such a project?

6 =96 Are there other implications that I should care about?

Sorry for the long posting - we are really interested in 
using Jacl but the project is large enough to take high risks 
at this point.

We appreciate your opinions/suggestions.

Regards,

Fernando M. Dagostini

Brazil Technology Center - Finatel
E-mail: fd...@no...

=0A =0A__________________________________________________________________=
________=0AAcabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.=0AAntiPop-=
up UOL - =C9 gr=E1tis!=0Ahttp://antipopup.uol.com.br/=0A