Adapting CORBA-Like Environments to a Microkernel

摘要

A common object distribution architecture has been a longstanding goal for thesoftware engineering industry. One of the most extensive standardization efforts in this field has been the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). The communication mechanism at the core of this standard provides a common object request passing facility. This facility, the Object Request Broker (ORB), implements software interfaces for passing remote method calls between objects and their users. The most common platform on which to construct the ORB is the operating system TCP/IP protocol stack. The standard also allows for adapting the ORB to other types of platforms, such as a microkernel. This is a special kind of operating system implementing a small set of system primitives with emphasis on Inter-Process Communication (IPC). On a microkernel, the kernel-supported IPC message passing facility forms the basis for the ORB communication. This work examines three different approaches on how to adapt the ORB to the unmodified OSF Mach microkernel, and how each adaptation affect efficiency, conformance, and the flexibility for change.