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2 Introduction to Orber

2.1 Overview

The Orber application is a CORBA compliant Object Request Brokers (ORB), which provides CORBA functionality in an Erlang environment. Essentially, the ORB channels communication or transactions between nodes in a heterogeneous environment.

Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) provides an interface definition language allowing efficient system integration and also supplies standard specifications for some services.

The Orber application contains the following parts:

2.1.1 Benefits

Orber provides CORBA functionality in an Erlang environment that enables:

2.1.2 Purpose and Dependencies

The system architecture and OTP dependencies of Orber are illustrated in figure 1 below:

dependent
Figure 1: Orber Dependencies and Structure.

Orber is dependent on Mnesia (see the Mnesia documentation) - an Erlang database management application used to store object information.

Note!

Although Orber does not have a run-time application dependency to IC (an IDL compiler for Erlang), it is necessary when building services and applications. See the IC documentation for further details.

orbs
Figure 2: ORB interface between Java and Erlang Environment Nodes.

This simplified illustration in figure 2 demonstrates how Orber can facilitate communication in a heterogeneous environment. The Erlang Nodes running OTP and the other Node running applications written in Java can communicate via an ORB (Object Request Broker). Using Orber means that CORBA functions can be used to achive this communication.

For example, if one of the above nodes requests an object, it does not need to know if that object is located on the same, or different, Erlang or Java nodes. The ORB will channel the information creating platform and application transparency for the user.

2.1.3 Prerequisites

To fully understand the concepts presented in the documentation, it is recommended that the user is familiar with distributed programming and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture).

Recommended reading includes Open Telecom Platform Documentation Set and Concurrent Programming in Erlang.


orber 3.6.6
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