CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a specification of an architecture and interface that allows an application to make request of objects (servers) in a transparent, independent manner, regardless of platform, operating system or locale considerations.
CORBA was developed by the Object Management Group(OMG). The OMG was founded by a group of commercial vendors in 1989. For more information on the OMG, please see the OMG Homepage. The OMG wanted to develop a common way to interact with distributed objects. To support this effort the OMG developed an object model, the OMG/OM. The OMG/OM is the underlying specification for all OMG compliant technologies. It is not part of CORBA, but the CORBA Object Model is an implementation of the specification.
The CORBA paradigm follows two existing methodologies, distributed client-server programming and object-oriented programming. The distributed computing is based on message-passing systems found in most UNIX systems. In CORBA, features of object-oriented programming such as encapsulation and inheritance are used.
The OMG defined an architecture, called the Object Management Architecture (OMA). This architecture outlines general technical guidelines that should be followed by every component within the OMA. The OMA Reference Model defines the categories of components necessary for the OMG to realize these goals. CORBA is the specification of one of these component categories, the Object Request Broker.
Using CORBA requires more than just a knowledge of the CORBA architecture. CORBA should be part of a well designed system architecture. As part of the tutorial we have included guidelines for developing a software architecture and maximizing success with CORBA. A section on using wrappers to incorporate legacy systems into this architecture. Guidelines have also been developed for selecting an ORB.
The information for this tutorial was compiled from the resources listed in the references section of this document. Some of the associated diagrams were adapted from these sources. All copyrights reserved.
Books CORBA, A guide to common object request broker architecture.Ron Ben-Natan, McGraw Hill, ISBN 0-07-005427-4 The Essential CORBA Thomas J. Mowbray,Ron Zahavi,Wiley Press,ISBN 0-471-10611-9
Articles: UNIX Review 4/96 - Programming with CORBA, Gabriel Minton. Object Magazine 3/96 - Architectural Analysis of ORB's, Gregory Abowd,Jonathan Engelsma,Luigi Guadagno,Okokon Okon. Dr. Dobbs 10/94 - Interoperable Objects, Mark Betz Software Development 10/95 - Build a CORBA Server, Mark Betz
Other interesting articles for distributed computing enthusiasts: Dr. Dobbs 2/95 - Quite a few articles dedicated to distributed computing.
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