Description:
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.
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