Inside CORBA

Thomas Mowbray is Principal Scientist at the MITRE Corporation, founding chair of the OMG Common Facilities Task Force, and recipient of the first OMG Fellowship award. He is the author of two of the best selling CORBA books, The Essential CORBA (Wiley, 1995) and CORBA Design Patterns (Wiley, 1997), and he teaches CORBA system architecture and development worldwide. William Ruh is CTO and senior vice president of services and solutions at Software AG. A frequent presenter at technical conferences, he testified before the U.S. Senate as an expert witness on technology.

List of Figures and Tables.


Foreword.


Preface.
I. CORBA BASICS

1. An Introduction to Corba.


Information Systems: From the Back Room to the Front Office.



Analyzing the Scenario.



Challenges in System Development.



System Integration.



Managing the Future.



Technology Availability.



Corba Overview.



Corba Concepts.



The Object Model.



Open Distributed Computing Environment.



Component Integration and Reuse.



Corba's Growth.



What You Will Learn From This Book.

II. CORBA STANDARDS

2. Corba Interface Definition Language (Idl).


An Overview of Corbaidl.



The Most Significant Element of Corba is the Interface Definition Language.



Omg Idl is a Stable Standard.



One Idl File Creates Multiple Language Bindings.



Idl Enables Platform Independence.



Idl is Pure Specification, Not Implementation.



The Quality of Idl Designs is Critically Important.



An Idl Tutorial.



Idl Modules.



Idl Interfaces.



Idl Forward.



Idl Constants.



Idl Type Declaration.



Idl Sequences.



The Dynamic Idl Type Any.



Idl Attributes.



Idl Exceptions.



Idl Operation Signatures.



Pre-Compiler Directives.



Conversion of Oo Designs to Idl.



From Oo Design to Idl Example: Course Registration Object Model.



The Oo Design.



An Abstract Idl Representation.



A Concrete Idl Representation.



Idl Guidelines.



Idl Identifiers.



Parameter and Return Values.



The Use of Attributes.



Use of Type Any.



Idl Modules.



Idl Documentation.



Concluding Remarks.

3. The Corba 2 Standard.


An Overview of Corba 2.



The Orb.



Corba Core.



Standard Object Model.



Interface Attributes and Operations.



One-Way Keyword.



Exception Handling.



Context Clause.



Object Implementation.



The Corba Architecture.



Static Interfaces.



Static and Dynamic Skeletons.



Static Versus Dynamic Invocation.



Corba Clients and Object Implementations.



Local Objects.



Marshaling.



Orb Libraries.



Client Invocation Process.



Invocation Scenario.



Interface and Implementation Repositories.



Interface Repository and Idl Object Models.



Applications of the Interface Repository.



Language Mappings.



C Language Mapping.



C11 Language Mapping.



Variable Type and Pointer Type.



Smalltalk Language Mapping.



Java Language Mapping.



Portability.



Interoperability and Ole Integration.



Corba Interoperability.



Corba and Microsoft.



Corba Guidelines.



Location Transparency.



Rely On the Corba Standard, Not the Orb Products.



Use of Standards.



Concluding Remarks.

4. Corbaservices.


An Overview of Corbaservices.



Many Application Developers Have Reinvented the Corbaservices.



Considering Vendor Support; Self-Building These Services.



The Corbaservices Architecture.



The Corbaservices Roadmap.



The Information Management Services.



The Property Service.



The Relationship Service.



Multithreaded Environments.



The Query Service.



The Externalization Service.



The Persistent Object Service.



The Collection Service.



Task Management Corbaservices.



The Events Service.



The Concurrency Service.



The Transaction Service.



System Management Corbaservices.



The Naming Service.



The Lifecycle Service.



The Licensing Service.



The Trader Service.



Infrastructure Corbaservices.



Security and Time Services.



Messaging Service.



The Future of Corbaservices.



Additional Services.



Concluding Remarks.

5. Corbafacilities and Corbadomains.


Overview of Corbafacilities.



Corbafacilities Versus Corbaservices.



Horizontal Corbafacilities.



Distributed Document Component Facility.



Compound Linking.



Opendoc Parts Framework.



Opendoc User Interface.



Opendoc Framework Objects.



The Common Management Facilities.



Internationalization and Time Operations Facilities.



Data Interchange Facility.



Vertical Corbafacilities and Related Activities.



Business Object Framework and Common Business Objects.



Meta-Object Facility.



Printing and Method Facilities Input.



Vertical-Market Areas.



Leveraging the Omg Process.



Exploiting a Predictable Process.



Application Profiles.



Inside the Omg Organization.



The Request for Information Process.



Creating Architectures and Roadmaps.



Rfp Adoption Processes.

III. CORBA SYSTEM ENGINEERING

6. Relationships With Other Technologies.


Choosing a Distributed Object Architecture.



Analyzing the Scenario.



Making an Informed Decision.



The Role of Standards.



The Underpinnings of Distributed Architectures.



Comparing Distributed Architectures.



Osf's Distributed Computing Environment.



Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model.



Javasoft's Java and the Remote Method Invocation (Rmi).



Interoperability With Corba.



Corba Selection and Application.



Corba Product Selection.



Issues in the Effective Application of Corba.

7. The Corba Migration Process.


Migrating to a Corba Architecture.



Analyzing the Scenario.



Enterprise Migration.



Architecture-Driven Migration.



Conformance Between Architecture and Implementation.



Migration to Commonality.



Migration Strategy.

8. Corba and Software Architecture.


Defining a Software Architecture.



Analyzing the Scenario.



The Role of Architecture in Software.



If Software Architecture is so Important, What is it?



The Elements of Good Software Architecture.



Corba and Software Architecture.



Models of Use for Corba in a Software Architecture.



Applying Corba to Software Architecture.



The Scope of a Software Architecture.



The Major Entities of Software Architecture.



Customizing the Software Architecture to the Organization.



Software Architecture Design.



Architecture Abstraction.



The Process for Software Architecture Design.



Defining the Software Architecture Objects and Interfaces.



Other Software Architecture Considerations.



Software Architecture Conclusions.

9. Application Design Using Software Architecture.


Designing the Application.



Analyzing the Scenario.



The Relationship of Architecture to Program Planning.



Recognizing the Learn-As-You-Go Process.



Prototype Development Using Corba.



Creating a Successful Environment.



Applying the Software Architecture to Application Design.



Selection of Application Components.



Designing Application Component Interfaces.



Defining Component Relationships.



Designing for Interoperability.



Increasing Reuse.



Making the Most of Inheritance.



Providing Good Exception Handling.



Test and Evaluation of the System.



Corba in the Operations and Maintenance Phase.



Measuring Progress.



Measuring the Progress of the Software Architecture.



Tying it All Together: Architecture and Application Design Processes.



Collaborative Processes for Architecture and Application Development.



Corba Architecture Process-the Analysis Steps.



Corba Architecture Process-the Definition Steps.



Corba Application Development Process.

10. Corba Migration Case Study: The Information Access Facility.


Problem and Objective.



Standards-Based Profiles.



Project Context.



Business Objects and Process.



Interface Migration.



Conclusions.



Do Not Design in a Vacuum.



Design for Quality.

Epilogue.
Appendix A. Omg Idl Grammar.
Appendix B. Omg Idl Definitions From Corba 2.
Appendix C. IDL for Corbaservices.
Appendix D. Guide to CORBA Resources.
Bibliography.
Acronyms.
Index. 0201895404T04062001