Distributed Object Computing with CORBA

Including updates on CORBA 2.0

A one day course by David Chappell.

Description

The union of object-oriented technology with distributed computing has the potential to revolutionize the software industry. Alternatively, it's blue smoke and mirrors, vendor hype that is years from fruition. The debate is primarily focused around the Object Management Group's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). CORBA defines an architecture for communication between objects, an Interface Definition Language (IDL) for defining the interactions between those objects, and a number of other things. In the CORBA world, older technologies for distributed computing such as sockets or remote procedure calls are made obsolete. Instead, all interactions are between (possibly distributed) objects, implemented in various languages and running in a variety of environments. The goal is to create a standard infrastructure for interaction between "software ICs": reusable, distributed application components. While many vendors currently support or soon will support CORBA, they all do it differently. The goal of this tutorial is to explain what CORBA is, why it's important, what's missing from it, and what major vendors are doing about it. Along with a technical description of CORBA and its components, the tutorial describes several CORBA implementations, including those from DEC, HP, and IBM.

Who should attend ?

The course is aimed at anyone who needs to understand the increasingly important relationship between object technology and distributed computing. While some background in both object-oriented concepts and distributed computing will be helpful, none is required, although knowledge of the C programming language is strongly recommended.

Course outline

Part I: Defining distributed object computing Part II. The OMG Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) Part III: Implementing CORBA: Vendor approaches
Information on current offerings.