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ECOOP 97 Workshop

CORBA: Implementation, Use and Evaluation

Position Paper

Distribution of Existing Programs via CORBA: Pitfalls and Remedies

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Abstract

In distributed object oriented systems, middleware products like CORBA are employed to perform the actual distribution on a network of computers. Existing systems that are developed using object based abstractions, cannot directly be distributed in form of a CORBA system.

Existing code does not cope with aspects related to distribution, such as synchronisation and partial failures. These aspects must be incorporated into the existing system, but should not augment the application code.

Technical problems that arise when distributing existing object-oriented programs with CORBA are caused by the need to specify signatures in an interface definition language (IDL). Not all data types have clear corresponding IDL definitions. Another example of necessary changes comprises the replacement of local object creation by the invocation of a remote factory object.

We are investigating how a reengineering machinery, we are currently deploying, can be combined with distribution tasks. In order to prototype a tool, we are using the graph grammar specification language PROGRES.