Common Object Request Broker Architecture Totally Explained

Everything about Corba totally explained

The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) that enables software components written in multiple computer languages and running on multiple computers to work together.

General overview

CORBA is a mechanism in software for normalizing the method-call semantics between application objects that reside either in the same address space (application) or remote address space (same host, or remote host on a network).
   CORBA uses an interface definition language (IDL) to specify the interfaces that objects will present to the outside world. CORBA then specifies a “mapping” from IDL to a specific implementation language like C++ or Java. Standard mappings exist for Ada, C, C++, Lisp, Smalltalk, Java, COBOL, PL/I and Python. There are also non-standard mappings for Perl, Visual Basic, Ruby, Erlang, and Tcl implemented by object request brokers (ORBs) written for those languages. The CORBA specification dictates that there shall be an ORB through which the application interacts with other objects. In practice, the application simply initializes the ORB, and accesses an internal Object Adapter which maintains such issues as reference counting, object (& reference) instantiation policies, object lifetime policies, etc. The Object Adapter is used to register instances of the generated code classes. Generated Code Classes are the result of compiling the user IDL code which translates the high-level interface definition into an OS- and language-specific class base for use by the user application. This step is necessary in order to enforce the CORBA semantics and provide a clean user processes for interfacing with the CORBA infrastructure.
   Some IDL language mappings are more hostile than others. For example, due to the very nature of Java, the IDL-Java Mapping is rather trivial and makes usage of CORBA very simple in a Java application. The C++ mapping isn't trivial but accounts for all the features of CORBA, for example exception handling. The C-mapping is even more strange (since it's not an OO language) but it does make sense and handles the RPC semantics just fine. (Red Hat Linux delivers with the GNOME UI system, which has its IPC built on CORBA.)
   A "language mapping" requires that the developer ("user" in this case) create some IDL code representing the interfaces to his objects. Typically a CORBA implementation comes with a tool called an IDL compiler. This compiler will convert the user's IDL code into some language-specific generated code. The generated code is then compiled using a traditional compiler to create the linkable-object files required by the application. This diagram illustrates how the generated code is used within the CORBA infrastructure:
This figure illustrates the high-level paradigm for remote interprocess communications using CORBA. Issues not addressed here, but that are accounted-for in the CORBA specification include: data typing, exceptions, network protocol, communication timeouts, etc. For example: Normally the server side has the Portable Object Adapter (POA) that redirects calls either to the local servants or (to balance the load) to the other servers. Also, both server and client parts often have interceptors that are described below. Issues CORBA (and thus this figure) doesn't address, but that all distributed systems must address: object lifetimes, redundancy/fail-over, naming semantics (beyond a simple name), memory management, dynamic load balancing, separation of model between display/data/control semantics, etc.
   In addition to providing users with a language and a platform-neutral remote procedure call specification, CORBA defines commonly needed services such as transactions and security, events, time, and other domain-specific interface models.

Key features

Objects By Reference

Objects are used in an application by reference. This reference is either acquired through a stringified URI string, NameService lookup (similar to DNS), or passed-in as a method parameter during a call.
Object references are lightweight objects matching the interface of the real object (remote or local). Method calls on the reference result in subsequent calls to the ORB and blocking on the thread while waiting for a reply, success or failure. The parameters, return data (if any), and exception data are marshaled internally by the ORB according the local language/OS mapping.

Data By Value

The CORBA Interface Definition Language provides the language/OS-neutral inter-object communication definition. CORBA Objects are passed by reference, while data (integers, doubles, structs, enums, etc) are passed by value. The combination of Objects by reference and data-by-value provides the means to enforce strong data typing while compiling clients and servers, yet preserve the flexibility inherent in the CORBA problem-space.

Objects by Value (OBV)

Apart from remote objects, the CORBA and RMI-IIOP define the concept of the OBV. The code inside the methods of these objects is executed locally by default. If the OBV has been received from the remote side, the needed code must be either a priori known for both sides or dynamically downloaded from the sender. To make this possible, the record, defining OBV, contains the Code Base that's a space separated list of URLs from where this code should be downloaded. The OBV can also have the remote methods.
The OBV's may have fields that are transferred when the OBV is transferred. These fields can be OBV's themselves, forming lists, trees or arbitrary graphs. The OBV's have a class hierarchy, including multiple inheritance and abstract classes.

CORBA Component Model (CCM)

CORBA Component Model (CCM) is an addition to the family of CORBA definitions. It was introduced with CORBA 3 and it describes a standard application framework for CORBA components. Though not dependent on "language independent Enterprise Java Beans (EJB)", it's a more general form of EJB, providing 4 component types instead of the 2 that EJB defines. It provides an abstraction of entities that can provide and accept services through well-defined named interfaces called ports.
The CCM has a component container, where software components can be deployed. The container offers a set of services that the components can use. These services include (but are not limited to) notification, authentication, persistence and transaction management. These are the most-used services any distributed system requires, and, by moving the implementation of these services from the software components to the component container, the complexity of the components is dramatically reduced.