Steve Vinoski
IONA Technologies
With respect to implementation details, there is a gap between the OMG specifications that define CORBA and the implementations of those specifications available from software vendors or as open-source software. Generally, OMG specifications describe interfaces and semantics, without dictating mechanisms or implementation. Vendors use these specifications to direct their efforts to implement ORBs and services, but their implementation choices are largely unconstrained. Similarly, while application developers use these ORBs and services as middleware for their distributed applications, their implementation choices are also relatively unconstrained.
This tutorial addresses how both the OMG specifications and the implementation choices made by middleware providers and application developers affect application scalability. We will cover a range of scalability issues, starting with ORB internals and working outward to full-scale applications, addressing issues such as:
This tutorial is not language-centric and is useful to developers using Java, C++, or any other language to develop CORBA-based applications.
This tutorial is intended for programmers who want to understand more about the mechanisms behind CORBA and how they affect real-world distributed applications. Attendees should have a basic grasp of CORBA interfaces and mechanisms; experience in developing distributed systems using middleware, especially CORBA, is a plus.
Steve Vinoski is Chief Architect for IONA Technologies. A frequent speaker at technical conferences, he has been giving CORBA tutorials around the globe since 1993. Steve has also helped put together several important OMG specifications, including CORBA 1.2, 2.0, 2.2, and 2.3, the OMG IDL C++ Language Mapping, the ORB Portability Specification, and the Objects By Value Specification. In 1996 he served as a charter member of the OMG Architecture Board. He is currently the chair of the OMG IDL C++ Mapping Revision Task Force. He and Michi Henning are the authors of "Advanced CORBA Programming with C++", published in February 1999 by Addison Wesley Longman, and he writes the "Object Interconnections" column for the SIGS C++ Report magazine with Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt.