Object Request Brokers

 

An Object Request Broker (ORB) manages the interaction between clients and servers, using the IIOP. It enables clients to make requests and receive responses from servers in a network-distributed environment.

The ORB provides a framework for clients to locate objects in the network and call operations on those objects as if the remote objects were located in the same running process as the client, providing location transparency. The client calls an operation on a local object, known as a stub. Then the stub forwards the request to the desired remote object, where the operation is run and the results are returned to the client.

The client-side ORB is responsible for creating an IIOP request that contains the operation and any required parameters, and for sending the request on the network. The server-side ORB receives the IIOP request, locates the target object, invokes the requested operation, and returns the results to the client. The client-side ORB demarshals the returned results and passes the result to the stub, which, in turn, returns to the client application, as if the operation had been run locally.

WAS uses an ORB to manage communication between client applications and server applications as well as communication among product components. During product installation, default property values are set when the ORB is initialized. These properties control the run-time behavior of the ORB and can also affect the behavior of product components that are tightly integrated with the ORB, such as security. WAS does not support the use of multiple ORB instances.

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Managing Object Request Brokers
Object Request Brokers: Links