Bootstrap Protocol

The IDL interface definition below provides an interface for the "initialization agent".

   interface InitialReferences
   {
      typedef sequence ObjectIdList;

      Object get(in string objectId);

      ObjectIdList list();
   };

The intention of this definition is that it will be used by the ORB implementations to implement the resolve_initial_references and list_initial_services ORB methods. Interoperable client ORBs send an invocation to an "initialization agent" which implements the InitialReferences interface. The agent will then reply to the client ORB with the requested information. The first operation, get, accepts a string which is the requested service id, and returns the object reference for the requested service, or the NIL object reference if none was found. The second operation, list, accepts no arguments and returns an ObjectIdList (a sequence of strings), containing the supported services.

This interface is implemented by a special object whose object key is 4 bytes long. The object key's value is always the 4 (upper case) characters 'INIT' encoded using ISOLatin-1 (8859.1) (hexadecimal values: 0x49 0x4e 0x49 0x54, or as a 32-bit word: 0x494e4954). This object only implements the interface defined using IDL above; it is not required to implement any of the operations defined on CORBA::Object (such as is_a, get_implementation or get_interface).

Implementation of the Bootstrap Protocol

All processes in the ORB run an "initialization agent". A local API (see Initial References Service) is provided to publish local/remote initial object references, as well as to obtain the "initialization agent" for a given host and port. The ORB daemon runs the "distinguished initialization agent" which has object references for supporting server activation, security, etc. The ORB instance should be configured with an IIOP URL that contains the address of some "initialization agent" using the ORBDefaultInitRef property or parameter.

Setting the Java System Property:

   java -DORBInitailURL=iiopboot://godel:2506 MyServer

Passing a property on ORB.init:

   Properties props = new Properties();
   props.put("ORBDefaultInitRef", "iiopboot://godel:2506");
   orb.init(props, args);

Passing program parameters to ORB.init:

   java MyServer -ORBDefaultInitRef iiopboot://godel:2506

and then:

   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
      ...

      orb.init(props, args);

      ...
   }

If ORBDefaultInitRef is not specified, then it defaults to iiopboot://localhost:2506, which is the port on which the ORB daemon listens on.

Note: The port 2506 is reserved by Novell from IANA.