Inside Corba: Distributed Object Standards and Applications (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) - Softcover

Mowbray, Thomas; Soley, Richard M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201895404 ISBN 13: 9780201895407

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 1997

Synopsis

This book breaks the moldby taking the reader through the entire spectrum of the distributed object approach, from requirements analysis through systems development, with a thorough treatment of relevant standards. -- Dr. Richard M. Soley, Technical Director, Object Management Group. Inside CORBA is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to distributed object architecture, software development, and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) standards. CORBA is a consensus standard from industry that has transformed the way information systems are developed, both for creating distributed object-oriented systems and for migrating legacy systems to modern architecture. This must-read for all managers, architects, and developers of distributed systems begins by addressing the key organizational challenges to the adoption of CORBA and the essential management guidance necessary to ensure its success. Following this introduction, the authors present a user guide to the CORBA standards, complete with examples of their application. The user guide also features in-depth coverage of the Interface Definition Language (IDL), including the latest presentation of the new CORBA IDL Language Mapping for Java, and comprehensive information on the CORBA 2 standard and the CORBA services. In addition, this book provides invaluable technical assistance on the application of CORBA by sharing essential lessons learned from experienced CORBA managers and architects and through the presentation of a case study.

About this title

Review

This is a thorough introduction to the world of Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), which provides a framework for building distributed systems, regardless of the hardware or software platform. The authors point out that while other distributed computing solutions (such as Microsoft's DCOM) are vendor specific, CORBA is maintained by the vendor-neutral Object Modeling Group (OMG) standards body. This can be a blessing, but also a bane, since most implementations of CORBA, as the authors note, do not implement all of the CORBA specifications or implement it differently from product to product.

The authors treat CORBA as the ideal, looking at its powerful Interface Definition Language (IDL), CORBA 2, which lets software developers model objects and interfaces independent of programming languages. (CORBA 2 also works with C/C++, Java, and Smalltalk; the details are discussed early in the book.) Of course, CORBA is not just a way to specify interfaces and the authors look closely at the specification for CORBAservices, a object brokering architecture model that is, at least in theory, a lot richer than DCOM. The authors also explore CORBAdomains, which allow certain interfaces for business objects within particular industries (such as banking and health care) to be built and reused. The authors also investigate CORBAfacilities, which allow applications to share documents.

The latter part of this book looks at the software engineering process and discusses how analysts can adopt CORBA to solve system architecture problems--mainly by retooling old systems and making them work together. This section is a little vague and though it introduces a case study, it doesn't give much detail.

Inside CORBA is best for learning what CORBA is and why it is the most mature technology for distributed processing that we currently possess. Computer professionals who are considering building (or rebuilding) a distributed computing information system will appreciate this book.

About the Author

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 the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Concept Five Technologies, where he helps companies rapidly develop secure electronic commerce and business applications by applying distributed object and messaging technologies. He is also the co-author of Inside CORBA (Addison-Wesley, 1997).

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Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0201895404
• ISBN 13: 9780201895407
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376