COBIA Phase III: marshaling

Within the CAPE-OPEN 2018 Annual Meeting, Jasper van BATEN (AmsterCHEM) shared his ideas about marshaling in the context of COBIA Phase III. Jasper was contracted by CO-LaN to develop Phase I and next Phase II of the COBIA project. As reported within the CAPE-OPEN 2017 Annual Meeting and the CAPE-OPEN 2018 Annual Meeting, COBIA has reached a stage where it can be used to develop PMCs and PMEs. The COBIA training course held on October 8, 2018 demonstrated that possibility.

This presentation (access PDF here, 346 Kbytes) is co-authored with Mark STIJNMAN from Shell Global Solutions who takes an active part in the activities of both the Thermo SIG and the Methods & Tools SIG.

COBIA Phase I was a proof of concept, especially that COM-based CAPE-OPEN software was able to interoperate with COBIA-based CAPE-OPEN software. Phase II gathers all the CAPE-OPEN interfaces with a sufficient business value as of now. Still it is Windows specific and C++ native. Phase III will introduce platform independence, and implementations on different platforms talking to each other, via marshaling. The exact scoping of Phase III needs still to be developed by the Methods & Tools SIG and authorized by CO-LaN Management Board but anyway marshaling will be necessary.

Jasper begins with outlining what COBIA Phase III will be as defined by the Methods & Tools SIG when requesting funding of COBIA to the CO-LaN Management Board. Next Jasper explains what marshaling is and why it is required. Also Jasper explains what are the tasks covered by marshaling before proposing different alternatives on how marshaling can be conducted. Finally Jasper makes a proposal on how to deal with marshaling in the context of COBIA.