CORBA

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In computing, Common Object Request Broker Architecture or CORBA, is a standard for software componentry. The CORBA standard is created and controlled by the Object Management Group (OMG). It defines APIs, communication protocol, and object/service information models to enable heterogeneous applications written in various languages running on various platforms to interoperate. CORBA therefore provides platform and location transparency for well-defined objects, which are the fundamental underpinnings of any distributed computing platform.

In a general sense CORBA "wraps" code written in another language into a bundle containing additional information on the capabilities of the code inside, and how to call it. The resulting wrapped objects can then be called from other programs (or CORBA objects) over the network. In this sense CORBA can be considered as a machine-readable documentation format, similar to a header file but with considerably more information.

CORBA uses an interface definition language to specify the interfaces that objects will present to the world. CORBA then specifies a "mapping" from IDL (Interface Definition Language) to a specific implementation language like C++ or Java. This mapping precisely describes how the CORBA data types are to be used in both client and server implementations. Standard mappings exist for Ada, C, C++, Smalltalk, Java, and Python. There are also non-standard mappings for Perl and Tcl implemented by ORBs written for those languages.

The CORBA IDL is only one example of an IDL.

As well as providing users with a language and a platform neutral remote procedure call specification CORBA defines commonly needed services such as transactions and security.

See also

• component technologies
• RFC
• RMI
• Web service
• Distributed computing
• Servant
• Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition
• GNOME Bonobo

External links

• Object Management Group
• Information Board
• Catalog of OMG Specifications
  • IDL / Language Mapping
  • CORBA Component Model (CCM)
  • IIOP
  • Services
  • Facilities
  • Domain
  • Embedded Intelligence
  • Security
  • UML, MOF, XMI, CWM

• An overview of available CORBA implementations
• Combat: a Tcl ORB, and a Tcl layer for C++ ORBs
• Python ORB
• Perl ORB
• JacORB
• TAO The ACE ORB
• e*ORB
• omniORB
• MICO

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