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This Weeks Giveaway

 
Sheriff
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This week's book giveaway is "Pure Corba", and the Author, Fintan Bolton, is on-line!
Everyone give him a huge JavaRanch welcome
 
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I would like to start off this thread by saying a few words to introduce myself and my book, Pure CORBA. I am a latecomer to the world of professional IT. My background was originally in the natural sciences, where I began my career in soap bubbles and then progressed to spend a few years researching quantum dots. In 1996 I joined IONA and for the past five years have divided my time between consulting and technical writing in the CORBA realm.
I should also say a few words about the book, Pure CORBA. Since it has only just rolled off the presses, I doubt that anyone has seen it yet (I haven't ). My main aim in writing the book was to produce a comprehensive introduction to and reference for the core CORBA features---the kind of book that would be useful to have at your elbow while coding. I also wanted to be faithful to the specification itself, instead of documenting a particular ORB implementation.
There are more details about the book on my website - http://www.pure-corba.com - for anyone who is interested.
I look forward to answering any question you might have about the book and CORBA in general.

------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
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Welcome, Thank You!
I am gathering alot of info on COBRA.
I am learning that there is alot more to java that I have not yet experienced.

------------------
 
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I haven't heard of CORBA before, is it a more advanced aspect of Java? Right now I'm reading the 2 core Java books from Sun, cover to cover. Does anyone know if these books mention CORBA?
Welcome to JRanch by the way.
 
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Hi Fintan Bolton,
How would compare Corba's Future in comparison with things like EJB and Webservice?
 
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conrad,
CORBA means something like CommonObjectRequestBrokerArchitecture (dont sue me if it's wrong....)
it enables communication between objects. objects on different machines or even written in different languages.
it is not tight to java, there are lot more languages (also before java) supporting corba.
i doubt that it's covered by core java books in detail.
(im not into corba so please someone correct me if im wrong).

karl
 
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Please discuss all technical questions under a new thread. Please use this thread for questions relating to giveaway only.
Thanks!
 
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Does Corba support the communication with Fortran language objects ?
How much overheads to implement it compared to implement RMI ?

Thanks,
Ruilin
 
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Welcome aboard Fintan and thank you for taking the time to visit us at the JavaRanch!!!
 
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hi friends! Its my first participation here.
I am new to JavaRanch but I have found it excellent.
As far as CORBA is concerned it provides a way to call the
methods of an object(may be a Java's object or any other language's object) potentially placed on a different machine.
Using RMI we can do the same but RMI only calls the methods of
a Java's object that belongs to some other virtual machine.
So if we compare RMI with CORBA the later one gives us a
language independent solution.
 
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Hi Fintan,
It's great that you are with us! Thank you so much.
<blockquote>
-------------------------------------------------
I've some basic question on the subject as follows:
> what is the need of CORBA in language design and what
could be the other parallel alternatives of CORBA?
> Why I should choose CORBA?
> What makes CORBA important in terms of Java?
> What are the raw materials (I mean necessary knowledge)
you need to start with CORBA?
> How do you see the future of CORBA?
----------------------------------------------------
Thank you for you reply.
Best regards,
Albert
</blockquote>

Originally posted by Fintan Bolton:
I would like to start off this thread by saying a few words to introduce myself and my book, Pure CORBA. I am a latecomer to the world of professional IT. My background was originally in the natural sciences, where I began my career in soap bubbles and then progressed to spend a few years researching quantum dots. In 1996 I joined IONA and for the past five years have divided my time between consulting and technical writing in the CORBA realm.
I should also say a few words about the book, Pure CORBA. Since it has only just rolled off the presses, I doubt that anyone has seen it yet (I haven't ). My main aim in writing the book was to produce a comprehensive introduction to and reference for the core CORBA features---the kind of book that would be useful to have at your elbow while coding. I also wanted to be faithful to the specification itself, instead of documenting a particular ORB implementation.
There are more details about the book on my website - http://www.pure-corba.com - for anyone who is interested.
I look forward to answering any question you might have about the book and CORBA in general.


 
Fintan Bolton
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Hi Jamie and Conrad,
Since you are new to CORBA, I will try to give you some idea of what it is all about. I think it is helpful to start by making a comparison of Java and CORBA. Both are distributed platforms, define distributed services and have many features in common. The distinguishing feature of CORBA, however, is that it supports multiple programming languages (including Java). Java supports, well, just Java.
Java has a few basic tricks it can perform over the network, as follows:
. Applets---download code over a network.
. Streamable objects---download an object instance over a network.
. RMI (remote method invocation)---leave the object where it is (on a server) and shuttle the parameters and return values back and forth over the network instead.

CORBA, on the other hand, has just one trick:
. Remote operation invocations---leave the object where it is (on a server) and shuttle the parameters and return values back and forth over the network instead.

So Java can do more things over a network---but only if everything is implemented in Java. CORBA, on the other hand, makes it possible to integrate applications written in many languages: Java, C++, C, COBOL, PL/I, etc.
I reckon these are the fundamental differences; everything else is pretty much just a question of the relative verbosity of the APIs.
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
Fintan Bolton
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Hi Albert,
> What is the need of CORBA in language design and what
could be the other parallel alternatives of CORBA?
CORBA is not directly related to language design (not to the design of Java anyhow). CORBA does define its own language, OMG IDL, but this is used only to define interfaces for CORBA objects (a bit like Java interfaces). OMG IDL does not let you write procedures.
A Java implementation of CORBA (i.e. an ORB) has two main elements:
- A library of Java classes that define basic CORBA APIs.
- A code generator (an IDL compiler) that generates the code you need to access objects remotely.

> Why I should choose CORBA?
If you want to integrate applications deployed across a hodge-podge of platforms (e.g. mainframes, UNIX, Windows) and written in a hodge-podge of languages (e.g. Java, C++, COBOL), CORBA is pretty much the only horse in the race. There is also Microsoft COM/DCOM, which is heavily weighted towards Windows platforms.

> What makes CORBA important in terms of Java?
You need it if you want talk to other programming languages.

> What are the raw materials (I mean necessary knowledge)
you need to start with CORBA?
Basically, you need to know your target language (in this case Java) pretty well. You also need a fairly good understanding of object-oriented programming concepts.

> How do you see the future of CORBA?
Well, I wish I knew what the future held! In recent times, CORBA has been driven strongly by the growth in the Internet and the need to integrate backend systems. Since there are practically no alternatives to CORBA in this area, I think CORBA will persist in the field of legacy/backend integration for a long time to come.
There is another area of technology where CORBA lags behind, however, and that is the whole area of Application Servers. CORBA goes some way to addressing the demands of an application server, but it has been pretty much eclipsed by EJB in this area. The CORBA Components specification was intended to catch up with EJB but there is currently no demand for it, and no implementations are yet available (as far as I am aware).
So, in summary, I believe that CORBA is secure in its traditional domain but has yet to break into application server territory.
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
Fintan Bolton
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Hi Satish,
I have already said something about the future of CORBA in my previous posting. To compare CORBA with EJB and Webservices, you could consider the different niches addressed by the technologies:
. Legacy/backend integration of diverse platforms---in this domain CORBA dominates.
. Application Servers---here there is overlap between EJB and CORBA. However, in this domain EJB is way ahead of CORBA because EJB is easier to use and it has a big head start.
. Webservices---Webservices do not really compete directly with CORBA. It is a complementary technology. Webservices is aimed at the Internet (B2B) whereas CORBA is aimed at the intranet (A2A). Granted, there was a time when people thought that CORBA would burst out onto the Internet, but we are wiser now
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
Fintan Bolton
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Hi Ruilin,
>Does Corba support the communication with Fortran language objects?
Not that I am aware of, no (though it could be extended, in principle). The OMG does not define a Fortran language mapping for CORBA either.
>How much overheads to implement it compared to implement RMI?
CORBA adds some extra boilerplate code to initialize the ORB and so on, which is an extra overhead compared with RMI. In a large application, however, this fixed overhead becomes fairly insignificant overall.
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
satish bora
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Thanks Finton.
Am now tempted to ask another question.
Can you say few lines about IIOP vs SOAP?

Thanks lot
Cheers
Satish
 
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Hi All!
This is my first post in this Forum!
Can we talk about EAI using CORBA technologies!
Does ne body have good links to this topic!
Thanx in advance
Asif
 
Fintan Bolton
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Hi Satish,
SOAP is not really my area of expertise but I can tell you why I think IIOP failed to establish itself on the Internet (and, conversely why SOAP might succeed).
To use IIOP over the Internet you have to overcome lots of obstacles, viz:
. Persuade your firewall adminstrator to open an incoming IIOP port.
. Persuade your client's firewall administrators to allow outgoing IIOP connections (and possible also incoming IIOP connections if you want to support callbacks).
. Distribute CORBA technology to all of your clients across the Internet (probably using CORBA-enabled Java applets).
There is no great motivation to go to all this trouble given that HTTP is already well established as a cheap and cheerful solution for most Internet clients. In contrast to IIOP, SOAP has a much better chance of establishing itself on the Internet because you can use it over the existing HTTP infrastructure.
Ultimately, SOAP might overtake IIOP as middleware plumbing because it has such widespread industry backing. But that possibility poses little threat to CORBA. ORB vendors would just replace IIOP plumbing with SOAP plumbing (or provide both). That layer of the ORB is practically invisible to CORBA developers anyway.

------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
ruilin yang
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Fintan,
Thanks for your reply.
Would you please comment on using Corba or RMI in Palm computing to be able to work locally and networking, in comparison witn http servlet/jsp pages.
Thanks,
Ruilin
 
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I want participate in the book's giveaway !
Ricardo
 
Fintan Bolton
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Ruilin,
The rule of thumb is to use CORBA inside the firewall and Java servlets or JSP to communicate with clients outside the firewall. If you are using the Palm devices on a local network, it might be simpler to implement the client using CORBA. It depends a lot on your long term plans. CORBA tends to require a bit more work but gives you a more flexible infrastructure.
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
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I would like to say hi to our guest and to ask one question.
How does CORBA server handles with multiple connections (queue or threads)? and is there any mechanism that can control it beside separate calls from the method)?
Thanks,
Vlad
 
satish bora
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Thanks Finton for your detailed reply.
I am also of opinion that SOAP might replace IIOP over the time.
Infact there are some vendors which are coming with
products which can publish your Corba Services over internet.
e.g http://www.capeclear.com/products/capeconnect/index.shtml
Cheers
Satish
[This message has been edited by satish bora (edited July 26, 2001).]
 
karl koch
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ricardo,
i doubt that this gives you any chances in the book give away.
the book giveaway page says that you have to either post a question related to the topic or post a reply so i assume this post wont count too.......

karl
 
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I think one of the sheriffs should lock this thread so the author can answer other questions outside of this thread. I think this thread is only supposed to be used to welcome the author and ask non technical questions about the giveaway itself.
 
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Hi all.
I tried to catch up the usage of the CORBA, but it is still far away from my understanding.

If I ask one question about CORBA, where can we use CORBA in the Mainframe enviroments (BANK, big financial companies) ?
Thanks in advance.
 
ruilin yang
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Fintan,
Thanks for you clear explaination.
Does RMI server effectively produce a separate thread to each cocurrent request ?
Say, 5 client simultanously request a RMI server, all the 5 client will be processed separately ?
Thanks,
Ruilin
 
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I recently read or heard from someone (I cannot remember which) that CORBA is an old technology and did not take off the way it was intended. Could you please explain to me if this is true.
Thank you
 
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I have a project coming up with CORBA and look forward to reviewing your book for a much needed introduction. (How timely!)
Meanwhile back to studying for the SCJP exam tomorrow! :-)

Originally posted by Fintan Bolton:
My main aim in writing the book was to produce a comprehensive introduction to and reference for ....
There are more details about the book on my website - http://www.pure-corba.com - for anyone who is interested.

[/B]


 
Fintan Bolton
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Hi Vladimir,
Connection handling properties are not described in the CORBA standard, so this aspect of CORBA is very ORB-specific. CORBA leaves this up to individual ORB vendors as an implementation detail.
From my experience of Orbix, I would say that a typical pattern is to use both queues and threads. One thread manages a group of connections, because this is a more scalable approach. The details are usually hidden from the user (although Orbix 3 allowed you to specify how many connections were assigned to each thread).
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
Fintan Bolton
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Duksun,
CORBA is widely used in banking and financial institutions. Amonst IONA's customers, the most popular approach to mainframe integration is using IONA's CICS or IMS adapters. These adapters let UNIX and Windows clients interact with the mainframe as if were a CORBA server.
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
Fintan Bolton
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Hi Ruilin,
>Does RMI server effectively produce a separate thread to each cocurrent request ?
I'm afraid I can't help you there---my knowledge of RMI doesn't stretch that far.
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
Fintan Bolton
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Glade,
CORBA has been around for a while (its standards body, the OMG, was founded in 1989) but I'd prefer to call it 'mature' rather than old It is now firmly established in the domain of legacy/backend integration. As an Internet technology CORBA has made less of an impact, and this is might be what people mean if they talk of CORBA 'not taking off as expected'. In spite of this, CORBA has benefitted greatly from the growth in the Internet because this growth provided a spur to greater backend integration.
------------------
Fintan Bolton
Author of Pure Corba
 
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i won and i received the book today !
thanks to the author as well as javaranch !!!
------------------
"Sun Certified Java Programmer"
KS
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