[Oz] Calling a Mozart procedure from C

[Denys Duchier]

wolfgang at leben99.de (Wolfgang Meyer) writes:

> Is there a way to call a procedure of a Mozart functor
> from within a C program?

Interestingly enough, this issue came up a few days ago on this list
(obviously a hot topic :-).  There are two primary ways in which to
interpret the question:

1. is it possible to embed Oz in an application, e.g. by linking with a
   library or something similar?

   The answer so far is no.  This is extremely difficult to achieve,
   and I wouldn't hold my breath :-)

2. is it possible for a C process to take advantage of services
   offered by an external Oz process?

   The answer here, of course, is yes, but the library does not yet
   contain abstractions to support this approach conveniently (except
   of course, using the distribution mechanisms for communicating
   between Oz processes - or using sockets and implementing your own
   protocol).

   What we need is to capitalize on such techniques as DCOM, SOAP,
   XML-RPC, the Oz marshaling protocol, or some other protocol to
   provide easy and transparent ways to invoke remote Oz services from
   arbitrary applications (C++ or other).

Clearly, the development of such abstractions is something which many
Oz users would like to see.  Let's work together to extend the
library.  Any takers?

Cheers,

-- 
Dr. Denys Duchier			Denys.Duchier at ps.uni-sb.de
Forschungsbereich Programmiersysteme	(Programming Systems Lab)
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Geb. 45	http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier
Postfach 15 11 50			Phone: +49 681 302 5618
66041 Saarbruecken, Germany		Fax:   +49 681 302 5615
-
Please send submissions to users at mozart-oz.org
and administriva mail to users-request at mozart-oz.org.
The Mozart Oz web site is at http://www.mozart-oz.org/.