Download PDF Advanced CORBA Programming with C++ Michi Henning

Sinopsis

For years, both of us have been (and still are) teaching CORBA programming with C++ to software engineers all over the world. One of the most frequently asked questions in our courses is, "Where can I find a book that covers all this?" Although many books have been written about CORBA, most of them focus on high-level concepts and do not address the needs of software engineers. Even though CORBA is conceptually simple, the devil lies in the detail. Or, more bluntly, books focusing on high-level concepts are of little use when you must find out why your program is dumping core.

To be sure, there are resources available about CORBA, such as newsgroups, Web pages, and the Object Management Group (OMG) specifications. However, none of them really meets the needs of a programmer who must get the code to work (and preferably by yesterday). We wrote this book so that there would finally be a tutorial and reference that covers CORBA programming with C++ at the level of detail required for real-life software development. (And, of course, we wrote it so that we would have a good answer for our students.)

Writing such a book is a tall order. Explaining the CORBA specification and APIs is one thing, and it's a necessary part of the book. However, knowing the various APIs will not, by itself, make you a competent programmer (only a knowledgeable one). To be competent, you need not only knowledge of the mechanics of the platform but also an understanding of how the different features interact. You must combine them effectively to end up with an application that performs and scales well and is maintainable, extensible, portable, and deployable.

To help you become competent (as opposed to merely knowledgeable), we go beyond the basics in a number of ways. For one thing, we provide advice as to what we consider good (and bad) design, and we make no attempt to hide problems with CORBA (which, like any other complex software system, has its share of wrinkles). Second, we go beyond the APIs by explaining some of CORBA's internal mechanisms. Even though you can use an ORB without knowing what goes on under the hood, it is useful to understand these mechanisms because they have a profound influence on how well (or how poorly) an application will perform. Third, we devote considerable space to a discussion of the merits of various design decisions; typically, when a design provides a gain in one area it also involves a loss in another. Understanding these trade-offs is crucial to building successful applications. And fourth, where appropriate, we make recommendations so that you are not left without guidance.

Content

1. Introduction
2. Introduction to CORBA
3. An Overview of CORBA
4. A Minimal CORBA Application
5. Core CORBA
6. The OMG Interface Definition Language
7. IDL for a Climate Control System
8. Basic IDL-to-C++ Mapping
9. Client-Side C++ Mapping
10. Developing a Client for the Climate Control System
11. Server-Side C++ Mapping
12. Developing a Server for the Climate Control System
13. The Portable Object Adapter
14. Object Life Cycle
15. CORBA Mechanisms
16. GIOP, IIOP, and IORs
17. Implementation Repositories and Binding
18. Dynamic CORBA
19. C++ Mapping for Type any
20. Type Codes
21. Type DynAny
22. CORBAservices
23. The OMG Naming Service
24. The OMG Trading Service
25. The OMG Event Service
26. Power CORBA
27. Multithreaded Applications
28. Performance, Scalability, and Maintainability

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