The Design Of Pluggable Protocols Framework Based On CORBA

CORBA(Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a standard for distributed computing, which uses object-oriented technology and make it easy developing distributed object-oriented applications. CORBA has many benefits. Most notably, it provides interoperability for distributed object, it separates communication logic from application logic.ARTs-OS is an embedded real-time operating system developed by Huaxiang Software Research and Development Center. ARTs-ORB is an embedded real-time middleware based on the system. It is used to support the execution of request which has QoS(Quality of Service) requirements in embedded real-time environments.Conventional CORBA implementations have the following limitations: static protocol configurations, lack of protocol control interfaces, single protocol support, lack of real-time protocol support. Therefore, it cannot meet the need of high-performance applications. The pluggable protocols framework of ARTs-ORB aims to abstract the same part or the generality of different transport protocols so as to flexibly plug different message/transport protocols into ORB(Object Request Broker) kernel. This can adapt to different kinds of applications.According to the limitations of GIOP/IIOP used in conventional CORBA middleware, the demanding that the pluggable protocols framework should meet is proposed and the general structure of the framework is given. The framework includes three main components: ORB Messaging Component, ORB Transport Adapter Component and ORB Policy Control Component. Through the components above, developers can transparently extend original communication architecture to support dynamic and static banding of new ORB messages and transport protocols. Pluggable protocols framework is implemented with many design patterns. On the highly real-time and security occasions, users can add custom and special protocols to ARTs-ORB, transparently and dynamically, so as to improve the performance of entire system.