CORBA and OMG Information Resources

The Object Management Group's
Common Object Request Broker Architecture
(OMG/CORBA)

Last modified: Tue, Aug 25, 1998 (09:33) .
Accesses: (counter reset Apr 20, 1996)

CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a standard for distributed objects being developed by the Object Management Group (OMG). The OMG is a consortium of software vendors and end users. Many OMG member companies are then developing commercial products that support these standards and/or are developing software that use this standard.

CORBA provides the mechanisms by which objects transparently make requests and receive responses, as defined by OMG's ORB. The CORBA ORB is an application framework that provides interoperability between objects, built in (possibly) different languages, running on (possibly) different machines in heterogeneous distributed environments. It is the cornerstone of OMG's Object Management Architecture.

Below we have links to:

• many documents and specifications that define CORBA,
• many magazine articles, papers, presentations, and books that describe the standard.
• companies developing CORBA implementations and CORBA tools,
• other consortia related to the OMG,
• Projects using CORBA,
• code which could be used for implementing parts of the standard,
• Pointers to other non-CORBA based distributed systems and important parallel-distributed systems.
• Pointers to conferences and workshops
• and other useful pointers

NOTE (information updates):

If you can help update or extend any of the information below, please send mail to bob@lanl.gov.

NOTE (not affiliated with OMG):

This is a resource page for CORBA related information and is not affiliated with the OMG. It started off as a private resource page for myself and others I work with and was intended as a central place to reference CORBA related information. Most of the documents referenced were not generated here at Los Alamos. Documents indexed here are proposals, drafts, working documents, and pre-publication drafts. For finial, official standards documents you must contact the OMG directly at info@omg.org.

OMG documents and specifications for CORBA:

• The OMG Technical Committee Work in Progress page
  (the place to find adopted standards as well as works in progress).
• The OMG technical document archive.
  The comprehensive and perpetually updated linked index to OMG documents.
• The OMG Schedule of Events.
• The OMG Web site.

Talks and papers on CORBA:

• A good introduction to the OMG's Object Management Architecture.
• Steve Vinoski's CORBA overview: CORBA: Integrating Diverse Applications Within Distributed Heterogeneous Environments
  (This paper will appear in IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 2, Feburary, 1997)
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• The CORBA 2.0/IIOP Specification (PTC/96-08-04)
• The CORBAservices Specifications
• Distributed Object Computing with CORBA by Steve Vinoski (HP)
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• A CORBA Tutorial by Doug Schmidt (Washington Univ - STL)
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Examples of writing CORBA applications by Doug Schmidt (Washington Univ - STL)
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Intro to Distributed Object Computing
  1st in a series by Doug Schmidt and Steve Vinoski from C++ Report.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Modeling Distributed Object Applications
  2nd in a series by Doug Schmidt and Steve Vinoski from C++ Report.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Comparing Alternative Client Distributed Programming Techniques
  3rd in a series by Doug Schmidt and Steve Vinoski from C++ Report.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Comparing Alternative Server Distributed Programming Techniques -- single-threaded servers
  4th in a series by Doug Schmidt and Steve Vinoski from C++ Report.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Comparing Alternative Programming Techniques for Multi-threaded Servers -- the Thread-per-Request Concurrency Model
  5th in a series by Doug Schmidt and Steve Vinoski from C++ Report.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Comparing Alternative Programming Techniques for Multi-threaded Servers -- the Thread-Pool Concurrency Model
  6th in a series by Doug Schmidt and Steve Vinoski from C++ Report.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Comparing Alternative Programming Techniques for Multi-threaded Servers -- the Thread-per-Session Concurrency Model
  7th in a series by Doug Schmidt and Steve Vinoski from C++ Report.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Distributed Callbacks and Decoupled Communication in CORBA
  8th in a series by Doug Schmidt and Steve Vinoski from C++ Report.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Measuring the Performance of Object-Oriented Components for High-speed Network Programming
  by Doug Schmidt (Washington Univ - STL)
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Design and Performance of an Object-Oriented Framework for High-Performance Electronic Medical Imaging
  by Doug Schmidt (Washington Univ - STL)
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• The Software Infrastructure -- Distributed Objects (PowerPoint format) by Chris Stone (President of the OMG).
• A Tour of CORBA (PowerPoint format) by Richard M. Soley (V.P. and Technical Director of the OMG).
• An Overview of CORBA COSS Event Services by Doug Schmidt (Washington Univ - STL)
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• Creating Industry Consensus (PowerPoint format) by Richard M. Soley (V.P. and Technical Director of the OMG).
• The Software Crisis (PowerPoint format) by Richard M. Soley (V.P. and Technical Director of the OMG).
• A circa 1994 CORBA 1.2 presentation from the OMG.
• Iona's Orbix Architecture Overview
• The CORBA FAQ

Books and other publications on CORBA:

• Instant CORBA
  Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey, Edwards
  Wiley, 1997
  ISBN: 0-471-18333-4
• CORBA Distributed Objects, using Orbix
  Sean Baker
  ACM Press, Addison-Wesley, 1997
  ISBN: 0-201-92475-7
  Publication date: May 1, 1997
• Java Programming With CORBA
  Andres Vogel, Keith Duddy
  Wiley, 1997
  ISBN: 0-471-17986-8
• CORBA Fundamentals and Programming
  Jon Siegel
  Wiley, 1996
  ISBN 0471-12148-7
• Understanding CORBA
  Randy Otte, et. al.
  Prentice-Hall, 1996
  ISBN: 0-13-459884-9
• The CORBA Reference Guide: Understanding the Common Object Request Broker Architecture
  Allan Pope
  Addison-Wesley, 1997
  ISBN: 0-201-63386-8
  Publication date: May 1, 1997
• Client/Server Programming with Java and CORBA
  Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey
  Wiley, 1997
  ISBN: 0-471-16351-1
• The Essential Distributed Objects Survival Guide
  Orfali, Harkey, Edwards
  Wiley, 1996
  ISBN 0-471-12993-3
  A very readable/good book.
• CORBA Design Patterns
  Mowbray and Malveau
  Wiley, 1997
  ISBN:
• The Essential CORBA: Systems Integration Using Distributed Objects
  T.J. Mowbray and R. Zahavi
  Wiley/OMG, 1995
  ISBN 0471106119
• Suggested Readings from the OMG
• ObjectCurrents,
• C++ Report, Object Magazine, and other SIGS publications

Links to companies with CORBA (and "CORBA-like") systems:

• BBN's Corbus
• Chorus Systems' CHORUS/COOL ORB
• CIL's (Component Integration Laboratories) OpenDoc.
  Also, see our (LANL's) OpenDoc resource page.
• DEC's (Digital Equipment) Object Broker
• DNS Technologies' SmallTalkBroker
• Silvano Maffeis' (Cornell) Electra
• Expersoft's PowerBroker
• Fresco
• HP's (Hewlett-Packard) ORBplus
• Iona's Orbix, and related products: OrbixWeb (Java/CORBA), OrbixTalk (CORBA Messaging), OrbixNames (CORBA Naming)
• IBM's SOM and OpenDoc
• ICL's DAIS
  This ORB offers a CORBA Security service.
• ILOG's ILOG Broker
  
• Object-Oriented Concepts' OmniBroker
• Object-Oriented Technologies' Distributed Object Management Environment (DOME)
• ParcPlace-Digitalk's Distributed SmallTalk
• Prism Technologies' OpenBase
• PostModern Computing (ORBeline and BlackWidow)
  Note: PostModern has merged with or has been bought by Visigenic. See the Visigenic entry below.
• Sandia National Labs' JIDL IDL compiler for Java.
• Stratus' Reliable Distributed Objects (RDO) (from the Horus / Isis people at Cornell).
• Sun Microsystems' NEO and their Java/CORBA system Joe.
  The Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI), the JavaIDL and the Java Beans environment.
• Taligent's TalAE/TalDV/TalOS... environment
• TIBCO's The Information Bus
• Tivoli Systems' Tivoli Management Environment
• TRW's Universal Network Architecture Services (UNAS)
• Visigenic's VisiBroker for C++ and their Java/CORBA product VisiBroker for Java
• Xerox PARC's ILU and an ILU/Java system Jylu.

Tools for use with CORBA:

• Black & White Software's development tools
• TakeFive's SNiFF+ development tool
• IDE's Software through Pictures OOA/OOD CASE tool
  Note: Interactive Development Environments (IDE) has merged with Thomson Software Products to become Aonix.
• LSDIS-UGA's METEOR multiparadigm Workflow management system
• ObjecTime's ObjecTime Toolset and CORBA features
• ProtoSoft's Paradigm Plus OOA/OOD CASE tool
• Rational's Rose OOA/OOD CASE tool
• I-Kinetics' Database Component product
• Sandia's IDLdoc documentation tools
• CSELT Labs' TINA-ACE CASE tool

CORBA related consortia:

• The Object Management Group OMG and the OMG FTP site
• The Object Database Management Group (ODMG)
• The ComponentWare Consortium
• An OMG IDL to Modula-3 translator (IDLM3)
• The Component Integration Laboratories (CIL) (OpenDoc's home)
• The Bioinformatics Java/CORBA working group

Projects/companies using CORBA (quite incomplete):

• The CORBAnet ORB Interoperability Showcase at DSTC (see their entry below).
• Australia's Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC) and their DCE / CORBA Bridge.
• Sematech's Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) Framework
• The C-17 STEP Transfer and Retrieval (CSTAR) project
• The Mitre Distributed Object Management Integration System (DOMIS)
• Dialogos is a company that will build ORB based applications for you using ICL's DAIS ORB.
• University of Minnesota's DAMSEL Project Dynamic Multimedia specification Language uses CORBA and Java
• Some of the projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) using CORBA include:
  the Sunrise project, the TeleMed project, the Global Weapons Information System (GWIS) project,
• The Information Sharing System (ISS), the ARTEMIS subproject, and Web*
• A Framework for Distributed Digital Object Services by Robert Kahn and Robert Wilensky
• The ANSA project
• GTE Laboratories' DOC Distributed Object Computing Group
• The Larch/CORBA project
• TCL/Orbix Integration
• The Web Broker
• The Motorola Iridium project

Freely available implementations of parts of the CORBA specification:

• A portable source-code library implementation of the CORBA (IIOP) interoperability protocol (courtesy of Sun Microsystems);
  and the README).
• An Interface Design Language (IDL) compiler 'C' front end courtesy of Sun Microsystems;
  and the README).

Other non-CORBA distributed systems:

• Open Software Foundation's (OSF) DCE (Distributed Computing Environment) and HP's OODCE ( Programmer's Manual) interface to DCE.
  (See note below to decode .gz files.)
• The OLE/COM Resource Center
• The DCOM 1.0 specification
• ETL's (Electrotechnical Laboratory) HORB (distributed Java)
• Doug Schmidt's ACE (ADAPTIVE Communication Environment)
• TCSI's Object Service Package (OSP). NOTE: Release 5.0 (the next major release) is said to be CORBA 2.0 compliant
• The University of Newcastle upon Tyne's Arjuna Research project (distributed, object-oriented, fault-tolerant)
• PeerLogic's Pipes
• Cornell's (Ken Birman) ISIS and Horus Research projects (process group oriented, fault-tolerant)
• System comparisons:
  • Interesting paper: Comparing ActiveX with CORBA/IIOP
  • A technical CORBA vs. OLE feature by feature comparison (by Dinesh Katiyar)
  • OpenDoc vs. OLE2.0 (by IBM)
  • SOM vs. COM (pro-SOM) (by IBM)
  • COM vs. SOM (pro-COM) (by Don Box)
  • DCE vs. CORBA (by Thomas Brando -- MITRE) (a bit dated now, but more unbiased than another report making the rounds)

Parallel-Distributed systems which support Object Oriented programming:

• Los Alamos National Laboratory's' POOMA FrameWork
• University of Virginia's (Andrew Grimshaw) Legion
• California Institute of Technology (CalTech) and Argonne National Laboratory's Nexus
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory's PVM
• The Message Passing Interface MPI
• Object-Oriented Message Passing Interface OOMPI (An OO Interface to MPI).
• CalTech and Indiana University's HPC++
• Indiana University's (Dennis Gannon) pC++ System
• CalTech's CC++ Parallel Language
• University of Virginia's Mentat System

Conferences & Workshops:

• OOPSLA Mid-Year workshops
  June 16-17, 1997 (Port Jefferson, Long Island)
• The TOOLS (Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems) Conferences
  • The TOOLS USA '97 Conference
    July 28 - August 1, 1997 (Santa Barbara, California)
  • The TOOLS Pacific '97 Conference
    November 24-27, 1997 (Melbourne, Australia)
  • The TOOLS Europe '97 Conference
    May 12-15, 1997 (Paris, France)
  • The TOOLS Asia '97 Conference
    September 22-25, 1997 (Beijing, China)
• The ACM SIGPLAN Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) '97 Conference
  October 5-9, 1997 (Atlanta, Georgia)
  Workshops of note include: Security issues in distributed object technology, CORBA and the World Wide Web
• The Object World Frankfurt '97
  (held in conjunction with COMDEX Internet '97)
  October 7-10, 1997 (Frankfurt, Germany)
• The Distributed Objects in Telecommunications -- DOCT'97
  (A special track at Object World Frankfurt)
  October 7-8, 1997 (Frankfurt, Germany)
• A list of SIGS sponsored conferences

Other useful references:

• The CORBA FAQ
• The comp.object.corba newsgroup is a good source for CORBA information and a forum for questions/answers.
• An archive of the CORBAdev Email list or Subscribe to the list (send the word "help" on a line by itself in the body of the Email message to find out how to get on the list).
• Doug Schmidt's CORBA page
• The CORBA FAQ
• The comp.object FAQ
• The Design Patterns home page

Notes:

NOTE (information updates):

If you can help update or extend any of the information below, please send mail to Bob Tomlinson (bob@lanl.gov).

NOTE (files ending in ".gz"):

Files ending in .gz are compressed with GNU Zip. To create .gz files use gzip; to uncompress them use gunzip. You can use your favorite search engine to find the most recent versions of these tools or get them from the University of Texas which showed up at the top of a search I just made.

NOTE (files ending in ".pdf"):

Files ending in .pdf are Portable Distribution Format files which can be viewed with an Adobe Acrobat viewer. Such viewers are available free from Adobe.

NOTE (files ending in ".ps"):

Files ending in .ps are PostScript format files which are printable on thousands of PostScript printers or viewable with PostScript previewing software. Note that PostScript files are not entirely portable and many software packages put out not quite correct PostScript that doesn't work with one printer or software package or another. So if you have problems with one piece of software you might try another before giving up.
To view PostScript documents, you can:

1. send the PostScript file to a PostScript printer,
2. view the PostScript with PostScript viewer software, or
3. convert the PostScript file to PDF format which is then viewable with PDF viewer.

Tools to view PostScript can be found with a web search. I searched for "PostScript viewer" and came up with a Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview page at the University of Wisconsin. To convert PostScript to PDF use the "distiller" function from Adobe Acrobat. See the note on PDF for info on viewing PDF files.