INTRODUCTION TO CORBA AND THE OMA
Written and maintained by the 800+ member companies of the Object Management Group (OMG), CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is the open standard for distributed object computing. Independent of system and software vendor, operating system, programming language, hardware platform, and even network environment, CORBA standards integrate systems throughout the enterprise and outside it to the internet. Products from multiple vendors implement CORBA in C, C++, Java, Smalltalk, COBOL, Ada, and other languages and environments; all interoperate freely based on the OMG-mandated protocol IIOP plus other protocols used in special situations.OMG specifications also extend interoperability into the application itself through components of the Object Management Architecture (OMA). Based on a foundation of basic interfaces and services for object lifecycle, transactions, security, and more, the architecture is now being extended into specific application domains with the definition of standard objects in business, finance, manufacturing, healthcare, electronic commerce, transportation, telecommunications, and other areas.
This seminar starts with an overview of CORBA, explaining how the Object Request Broker and OMG/ISO Interface Definition Language combine to provide the basis for platform-independent interoperability. It continues with a high-level view of the Object Management Architecture, and a description of how the OMG members work together to determine OMG's specifications. Following this high-level description, technical topics will be addressed: IDL and ORB details; client stubs and server skeletons, server activation methods, and the interface repository.