Re: Sharing Objects

[Von Colborn <selah-vc@srv.net>]

Chip,

If you are wanting to have two or more classes communicate between each other
on the same computer, you also could consider Windows Messaging. It would
probabily not be as fast as a proxy class but does have the advantage of being
able to send a message without knowing if any objects are available to catch
it. For example an application that has floating windows should hide them when
it goes into the background or is collapsed to the Task Bar. A hide/show
message could be dispatched and any windows that handled the message would
respond. Of course in VCL you could just iterate over the child forms and do
the same thing; but you get the idea.

The proxy suggestion is similar to CORBA (common object request broker). This
has the advantage of being, at least potentially, cross platform, where
objects register its services with the ORB. Your application requests a
service and the ORB dispatches it to the appropriate object. There may be
several objects that provide the same service and the ORB would, in that case,
dispatch your request to the next available object.

 I'm sure that their are other ways to skin the cat that would be just as
effective. I do suspect that COM/DCOM is overkill unless you have to
communicate across a network.

Von R. Colborn
Cornerstone Systems, Inc.