Mono - sharing code on client and server . .

Question

We are trying to come up with our client and server standard and there is a big debate. One school of thought is C# client and java servers using some type of proprietary messsage library to share data objects (think XML like structure . .)

The issue with this model is that there is lots of code that needs to be duplicated (validation, parsing) that could simply be reused if you went with C# on the server as well. If there is a big push to use linux machine then wouldn't mono support your goal . .

anyone else have this dilemma?

Answer 1

There are frameworks for this. ICE (ZeroC), "protocol buffers", etc.

For example, my protocol buffers implementation (protobuf-net) works on mono, MS .NET, CF, Silverlight etc - and the binary format is compatible with a range of languages (java, etc). If you start from a .proto (a bespoke definition language), you can use it to generate the object layer in each language you need.

Answer 2

In any case I would use Protocol Buffers or something else defined in a language neutral form for the comms, to ensure that you aren't restricted in future.

Once you've done that you can start with C# on Mono. And then if that proves to be unworkable, you can switch to a different language.