Some CORBA Resources
OMG - the guys who define CORBA
OMG which stands for Object Management Group is institution that defines CORBA standard. It is basically industry group where
members create (or ammend older) standards. On their website you can find all CORBA standards that are in force,
and also you can monitor work that is in progress, i.e. current proposals for new standards or ammendments of the older ones.
Web site itself is huge, so you will need some time to feel like home, but it is worthvile investment considering amount of
informatiuon that can be digged out there.
As far as standards are considered, there are many of them, and not all of them are equally important, or well written. Some parts
like the core CORBA architecture and IIOP are great, but some service specifications were hardly ever iplemented in real life.
So again, take your time, and use a grain of salt.
Web site: www.omg.org
Visibroker by Borland, Inprise, or whatever their name is today
Visibroker is one of the most popular ORBs. Before it was acquired by Borland, Visibroker was licenced to Netscape
and it was included in their browsers. Anyway this version is quite ancient. Nowdays you can use it standalone, but it
also comes bundled with other Borland products (java for instance).
Web site: http://www.inprise.com/visibroker/
IONA
Is one of the veterans of the CORBA, since they were among the first ones to come up with commercial ORB.
Although the CORBA is their core, they have been known to try out different approaches and technologies.
They are ofte first ones to implement new specifications, or even predate them. I can not say I have expirenced
it myself, but some of their releases seemed to generate more customer support, at least according to
postings to public news groups. Anyway, that seems to be quite some time ago, and IONA is one of largest
if not the largest heavyweights in CORBA and middleware world.
Web site: http://www.iona.com/
ORBacus by Object Oriented Concepts
Is quite often used ORB, it used to be free for noncomercial uses, and reasonably priced for others.
It was quite well received among developers, and it has been used on number of larger projects.
Now OOC is owned by IONA, and all that can be found on the web is that one should e-mail IONA sales for pricing info.
Web site: http://www.ooc.com/
MICO or MICO Is CORBA
Now, that I am not sure of ORBacus future freedom, here is a pointer to one GPLed C++ ORB.
As far as I know, MICO is used by Gnome project which should provide it future development.
Web site: can be found here
Books
Advanced CORBA Programming with C++
by Michi Henning, Steve Vinoski
Number of books about CORBA is very large, but only a few can be relied on to deliver real usable infromation for
people who use the CORBA technology; this book is one those few. If you are using CORBA from C++ this is the book
you are going to need, and even if you are using CORBA from some other language like Smalltalk or Java, this book
contains plenty of usefull and hard to find information.
IIOP Complete: Understanding CORBA and Middleware Interoperability
by William A. Ruh, Thomas Herron, Paul Klinker
The title of this book seems somewhat modest, by covering only the IIOP from CORBA. But, since the IIOP is
most successfull and most used part of the technology, this book gets you a cruical information about CORBA
that is most important to understand the technology. So take this "narover" focus of this book as advantage,
not disadvanatge. After you read it, you will much easier read other books trying to cover everything, and
you will also be much more capable to distinguish hype from what is really available to programmers.
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