Fw: omniORB

["Douglas Olson" <dlolson@lbl.gov>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik Nordberg <henrikn@math.lbl.gov>
To: challenge@sseos.lbl.gov <challenge@sseos.lbl.gov>
Date: Thursday, April 02, 1998 1:05 PM
Subject: omniORB


>Hello Datafolks,
>
>The ORB I mentioned (MICO) doesn't look interesting to us. (They don't
>mention multithreading and say performance isn't a goal.)  omniORB,
>however, looks very interesting. They seem to pay a lot of attention to
>threads and exceptions. Which makes us feel all warm and cozy inside,
>right? 
>
>Is this useful to us?
> - Henrik
>Ps. note that omniORB is missing some CORBA features (see below), but I
>can't tell if we can live without them, so please have a look.
>
>The following info was taken from:
>http://www.orl.co.uk/omniORB/omniORBTechnical.html
>
>Technical highlights
>* C++ language binding is supported. 
>* The IDL compiler uses the compiler front end from Sun, and generates C++
> language mapping conforming to the latest revision of the CORBA
> specification. 
>* The Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) is used as the native protocol. 
>* The omniORB2 runtime is fully multithreaded. It uses native platform
> thread support encapsulated with a small class library, omnithread, to
> abstract away from differences in native thread APIs. 
>* `Typecode' and the type `Any' are supported. 
>* A COS Naming Service, omniNames, is provided. 
>* The following platforms are supported: 
> Solaris 2.5/ Sun SparcCompiler C++ version 4.2 
> Digital Unix 3.2/ DEC C++ compiler version 5.5 
> x86 Linux 2.0 / GNU C++ compiler version 2.7.2 / Linuxthreads 0.5 
> x86 Windows NT / Windows 95 / Visual C++ version 5.0 
>* Ports to the following platforms are available. These ports are done by
> external contributors and have been integrated into the source tree. For
> these platforms, no pre-compiled binary is available. 
> IBM AIX 4.2/ IBM C Set++ 3.1.4 
> HPUX 10.20/ aC++ (B3910 A.01.04) 
> OpenVMS Alpha 6.2/ DEC C++ compiler 5.5 (UCX 4.1 ECO 8) 
> OpenVMS Vax 6.1/ DEC C++ compiler 5.5 (UCX 4.0 ECO 1) 
> NextStep 3.3/ gcc-2.7.2 
>* This release has also been tested with egcc-1.0 that has been patched to
> support thread-safe exception handling. 
>* The ports to Mac OS and SGI Irix 6.x are known to exist. However, the
> ports have not been merged into the source tree yet. 
>* It should be straightforward to port omniORB2 to any platform which
> supports POSIX style threads, BSD style sockets and has a decent C++
> compiler which supports exceptions. 
>* It has been tested for interoperability via IIOP with other ORBs, such
> as Iona Orbix 2.2 MT, Iona OrbixWeb 2.0.1, Visigenic Visibroker 
> for C++, and HP ORB Plus 2.5. 
>
>Work in progress
>omniORB2 is not yet a complete implementation of the CORBA core. The
>following features are not supported in the current release. 
> * Dynamic Any (DynAny) not yet supported. This is currently being
>implemented. Please visit the omniORB home page for latest updates. 
>* The Dynamic Invocation Interface (DII) is not supported. 
>* The Dynamic Skeleton Interface (DSI) is not supported. 
>
>Missing features
>The following features are missing from omniORB2. We are not currently
>planning on adding support for these features. 
>* The BOA only supports the persistent server activation policy. Other
> dynamic activation and deactivation polices are not supported. 
>* omniORB2 does not has its own Interface Repository. 
>
>
>___________________________________________________________
>Henrik Nordberg <HNordberg@lbl.gov> http://nordberg.lbl.gov
>Scientific Data Management Research & Development Group
>Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
>
>