CORBA

Aksahy Ukey Roll no: 4303 BE div-A

Introduction
CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a standard that enables an object written in one programming language, running on one platform to interact with objects across the network that are written in other programming languages and running on other platforms.
For example, a client object written in C++ and running under Windows can communicate with an object on a remote machine written in Java running under UNIX. 2

OMG
The CORBA specification was developed by the Object Management Group (OMG). The OMG is an international, not-forprofit group consisting of approximately 800 companies and organizations defining standards for distributed object computing CORBA is only one of the specifications they develop. They are also behind other key object oriented standards such as UML (Unified Modeling Language).
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History
The OMG was established in 1988 and the initial CORBA specification came out in 1992. Over the past 10 years significant revisions have taken place.

Version 2.0, which defined a common protocol for specifying how implementations from different vendors can communicate, was released in the mid-nineties.
The current version of CORBA is 3.0, which introduced the CORBA Component Model.
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Today
Today, CORBA serves as middleware for a variety of large enterprise level applications.
One of the most important and most frequent uses is for servers that must handle a large number of clients, at high hit rates, with high reliability. The current users of CORBA are diverse - including The Weather Channel, GNOME, US Army, CNN, and Charles Schwab.
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Specification vs. Implementation

CORBA, as defined by the OMG, is a standard or specification and not a particular piece of software.
CORBA 3.0 is actually a suite of 10 standards, each defining aspects of a CORBA implementation. Several implementations of the CORBA standard exist. Among the most widely used are IBMs SOM (a.k.a. SOMobjects) and DSOM architectures. There are also free implementations available for general use.
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Standard Call and Return

Client App. / Applet Servant (Server)

Skeleton IDL Stub POA

ORB

IIOP

ORB

Client Call Return Value

CORBACORBA Architecture

The Primary Elements

IDL

Interface Definition Language Abstract objects based upon a concrete implementation Object Request Brokers General and Internet Inter-Object Protocols
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Client / Server CORBA Objects

ORBs

GIOP / IIOP

Interface Definition Language

Defines public interface for any CORBA server. C++ like syntax Client and Server implemented based on compilation of the same IDL (usually) OMG has defined mappings for:

C, C++, Java, COBOL, Smalltalk, ADA, Lisp, Python, and IDLscript

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Object Request Brokers (Orbs)

Responsible for all communication

Locating objects

Implementation specific Known IOR(Inter-Object Reference) Naming and Trading Services( DSN-like)

Transferring invocations and return values Notifying other ORBs of hosted Objects

Must be able to communicate IDL invocations via IIOP If an ORB is OMG compliant, then it is interoperable with all other OMG compliant ORBs
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Drawbacks

Lower Level than COM+/.NET/EJB Configuration in Code Steeper Learning Curve than other solutions.

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Object Management Architecture(OMA)

Center of all the activity undertaken by OMG OMA specifies a range of architectural entities surrounding the core ORB, which is CORBA proper Detailed specifications for each component and interface category is populated in OMA reference Model
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OMA Reference Model

The Future of CORBA

Much easier for developers to build and run client/server applications written in different languages using the IDL interface Compute-domain benefits

Functionality the same as if written to sockets or some other RPC device Allows rapid development of full service website
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Business-domain benefits

Companies Using CORBA Today

AT&T

Late 1990s developed 20 to 40 systems using CORBA for both internal and external access Are certain development time for future projects will be greatly reduced by building reusable frameworks with the OMG Used CORBA and Linux System is reliable, low maintenance, offers data logging Cut software development time from months to weeks

The Weather Channel

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References

www.oma.org www.corba.org developer.java.sun.com/developer/ onlineTraining/corba

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