Thank you for your interest in the Novell exteNd Messaging Platform's ORB. This ORB is an enterprise-class, high performance, and scalable Java CORBA ORB runtime, services, and development tools.
Version 5.2 of the ORB is CORBA 2.4 compliant. It includes features like the forward (IDL to Java) and reverse (Java RMI to IIOP, and Java RMI to IDL) compilers, Portable Object Adapter (POA), Objects by Value, Server Activation, IIOP Connection Concentrator, Pluggable Authentication support, IIOP/SSL, COS Name Service, Multicast Object Invocations, and Object Transaction Service pluggability.
Please see the datasheet for the list of all features, and the Release Notes for the list of new and improved features.
Version 5.2 of the ORB is a maintenance and bug fix release.
Version 5.1 of the ORB is a minor release with the following features:
Support for JDK 1.4
Support for NetWare 6.5
Support for additional SSL cipher suites
Includes GUI based monitoring console
Includes transaction service
Version 4.0 is a major release supporting CORBA requirements for J2EE 1.3. It provides several new and improved features:
Common Secure Interoperability (CSIv2)
Interoperable Name Service
Upgraded IIOP Protocol (IIOP 1.2)
Support for Object Transaction Service (OTS) v1.2 implementation
Support for Internet clients by tunneling IIOP through HTTP
Clustering support for Fail-Over and Load-Balancing
Monitoring APIs and support for GUI monitoring console
The HTTP Tunnel feature of the ORB requires a Servlet 2.2+ runtime.
The ORB supports the Java 2 platform in several key ways.
Implements the Java IDL Specification
The ORB is a super set of the Java IDL with support for persistent objects, Portable Object Adapter (POA), RMI over IIOP, Java Objects by Value, Persistent CosNaming, JNDI support, Pluggable Authentication support, IIOP/SSL, Transaction Service support etc.
Java 2 can be configured so that the ORB implementation of the Java IDL
APIs can replace the JDK native implementation. This is done by copying
the $(NOVELL_EXTEND_HOME)/MP/lib/orb.properties file to the
$(JAVA_HOME)/jre/lib directory.
The ORB provides extensive CORBA Naming support.
The ORB Daemon, jorbd,
by default, runs a persistent NameService. You can access its root NamingContext
from Java IDL by setting system properties ORBInitialHost, and
ORBInitialPort
to the hostname and port (2506, by default) respectively where the ORB
daemon is running.
For added compatability with Java IDL, the ORB includes, tnameserv, a simple transient name server.
The ORB's idl2java compiler generates portable bindings (using the -dynamic flag) that can be used with the Java IDL ORB.
The ORB honors the Java IDL proprietary ORB properties - org.omg.CORBA.ORBInitialHost
and org.omg.CORBA.ORBInitialPort
Implements the RMI-IIOP Specification
rmi2iiop
is the equivalent of the JDK rmic -iiop compiler. It will generate
stubs and ties that can be used in conjunction with the PortableRemoteObject
APIs. In addition, for higher server scalability you can choose to use
the Portable Object Adapter (POA) and generate bindings for it using
the -poa option.
rmi2idl is the equivalent of the JDK rmic -idl compiler
The ORB include runtime support for the javax.rmi.PortableRemoteObject
APIs as well as the Portable Object Adapter.
The ORB supports the use of the JNDI COSNaming provider from Sun.
The ORB is also capable of running implementations
that use javax.rmi.PortableRemoteObject APIs over JRMP (Java Remote Method
Protocol), the original protocol used by Java RMI. The decision to use
IIOP stubs vs the JRMP stubs is made at runtime based on the type of stubs
that the runtime is able to load.
Integration with Java 2 Security
The ORB can be used with the Java security manager turned ON. To do so the ORB is required to be installed as a Java 2 Extension and run as "trusted" code with "AllPermissions" (which is the default for all installed Java 2 extensions.)
The ORB protects the following of its APIs using the Java 2 Permissions framework so that only the codebases that have sufficient permissions can successfully invoke them.
create/destroy ORB objects
read/write Initial Object Reference
install a Transaction Service using the TSIdentification APIs
POA create, destroy, get POA Manager
set Thread and ORB level Principals using the SecurityCurrent
creating a transient or persistent NameService instance
For details please see Integrating with Java 2 Security.
Packaged and Installable as a Java 2 Extension
The ORB install program can install the ORB as a Java 2 Extension copying its JARs, property files, and native libraries to the JDK 1.2 extension directory. If you choose not to install the ORB as a Java 2 extension at install time, or if you installed using JDK 1.1.x, you can later install the ORB as a Java 2 extension by executing the following steps:
Copy the $(NOVELL_EXTEND_HOME)/MP/lib/orb.properties file to
the $(JAVA_HOME)/jre/lib directory
Copy the $(NOVELL_EXTEND_HOME)/MP/lib/mp-orb.jar and
$(NOVELL_EXTEND_HOME)/MP/lib/mp-orb-tools.jar
files to the $(JAVA_HOME)/jre/lib/ext directory.
Copy all the $(NOVELL_EXTEND_HOME)/MP/lib/*.properties files to
the $(JAVA_HOME)/jre/lib/ext/classes directory.
Copy the ORB's native libraries to the JDK extensions directory
On Solaris: copy $(NOVELL_EXTEND_HOME)/MP/bin/solaris/libmporb12.so
to the $(JAVA_HOME)/jre/lib/ext/sparc directory
On Windows: copy $(NOVELL_EXTEND_HOME)/MP/bin/win32/mporb12.dll to the
$(JAVA_HOME)/jre/lib/ext/x86 directory
This release comes with reference documentation as well as a tutorial that will familiarize you with the various features of the ORB.
We have included several sample programs that showcase ORB features.
Copyright © 2003, 2004 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003 SilverStream Software, LLC. All rights reserved.