CORBA Object Services Overview
CORBA Object Services Overview
The CORBA Lifecycle Service enhances object management by supporting the creation, copying, moving, and deletion of objects and object groups. It allows for the registry and retrieval of factory objects, which can be utilized to create new objects dynamically. This flexibility facilitates dynamic lifecycle management of distributed objects, aligning object operations with application requirements .
The CORBA Security Service provides mechanisms for authentication, secure communication, delegation of credentials (impersonation), and non-repudiation. SSL is sufficient for simple authentication and secure communications but lacks advanced features such as credential delegation and non-repudiation. These advanced features are critical for secure distributed applications that require comprehensive security protocols beyond the basic capabilities of SSL .
The Externalization Service in CORBA allows objects to be serialized through the implementation of the Stream interface. By using an externalize method, objects can write data types defined in OMG IDL or embedded objects to a StreamIO object. This service streamlines integration with various persistence mechanisms, like files or databases, by providing an abstraction that separates object logic from storage specifics, enhancing interoperability and flexibility in distributed environments .
The Object Query Service enables efficient querying by supporting the creation of query objects, which encapsulate and prepare queries for execution. The service utilizes query evaluators to process these queries over collections, managed by query managers. Queryable collections return result sets that clients can iterate using provided interfaces. This structure allows sophisticated querying and retrieval processes, facilitating effective data manipulation in distributed systems .
The CORBA Concurrency Control Service manages resource locks in both transactional and non-transactional contexts. Locks can be acquired in read, write, and upgrade modes. A read lock allows multiple readers concurrently, while a write lock ensures exclusive access. An upgrade lock starts as a read lock but can escalate to a write lock, ensuring non-conflicting read access with the option to switch to exclusive write access when necessary. This flexibility allows efficient and safe management of resource access across different contexts .
The CORBA Relationship Service introduces an associative model that permits the creation and maintenance of object relationships without altering the objects involved. This contrasts with language-level pointers or references, which are more rigid and require object modification to establish relationships. The service allows relationships to be defined more dynamically and flexibly, providing a more versatile way to model complex interactions between objects .
The CORBA Naming Service uses a directory-like structure to facilitate object identification by allowing arbitrary names to be associated with objects. These names are unique within a naming context, which are hierarchical and form a naming tree. This hierarchy is similar to file system directories, enabling clear navigation and organization of objects within a distributed system .
The CORBA Event Service supports two models for event notifications: push and pull. In the push model, event suppliers directly push events to consumers through an event channel. In the pull model, consumers poll the channel for events. The Notification Service extends this by offering more quality of service features and capabilities for event filtering and structured events, providing a richer set of functionalities than the Event Service alone .
The Object Transaction Service (OTS) facilitates distributed transaction management by maintaining a current transaction context that can be used across both ORB and non-ORB activities. It supports flat transactions, which handle operations in a single, atomic transaction, and nested transactions, which allow transactions to be layered hierarchically, where subtransactions can commit or rollback independently of the outer transactions .
The Time Service addresses time synchronization challenges by handling inaccuracies inherent in distributed systems with asynchronous clocks. It allows real-time information to correlate internal events with universal time, helping improve synchronization and order of operations across different network nodes, thereby enhancing consistency and timing reliability in distributed applications .