Re: org.omg

[Sascha Brawer]

Brian Jones <address@hidden> wrote on Sun, 6 Oct 2002 00:49:35 -0400:

>Sun includes a number of classes from the org.omg package that appear
>to be freely available (but lacking the javadoc) from
>ftp.omg.org/pub/javartf/.  The license is as below.
>
>Copyright (c) 1999 Object Management Group. Unlimited rights to 
>duplicate and use this code are hereby granted provided that this 
>copyright notice is included.
>
>This is essentially the same as the license on the code in w_log.c for
>example.  Should we go ahead and import the appropriate pieces of code
>from OMG?

Not being a lawyer, I cannot have an informed opinion here.

>From a purely technical point of view, I think this surely would make sense.

However, we'd need to do a lot more for this to become useful. Maybe this
is obvious to everyone on the list, but in case it isn't, let me outline
what would be needed for CORBA support:

1. Use an IDL-to-Java compiler tool (like Sun's idlj) to generate Java code
   for standard IDL files provided by the OMG. For example, package
org.omg.IOP
   is derived from IDL, and not directly available at ftp.omg.org/pub/
javartf/.

   Having done this, we'd have roughly the same as is documented on the
Javadoc
   pages for Sun's J2SE 1.4.  AFAIK, this should be enough to run an ORB on a
   Classpath-based JRE.


2. Provide an actual implementation for all those interfaces and abstract
classes.
   For example, have a look at org/omg/PortableServer/Servant.java: It pretty
   much forwards everything to a delegate object, which has to implement
   the interface org.omg.PortableServer.portable.  If we wanted to have
   a fully functional CORBA implementation in Classpath, we would have to
   provide an implementation of this interface.   Plus implementations of
numerous
   other interfaces and abstract classes as well.


3. Write a GNU version of an IDL-to-Java compiler (i.e., a replacement
for idlj).


(1) without (2) is somewhat useful: users could run CORBA applications if
they license an ORB from someone. Also, (1) is a prerequisite for
supporting CORBA in Classpath.  But the big amount of work is (2).

By the way, could we legally use Sun's idlj for (1), or do we have to do
(3) first?

I'm sorry if everyone was already aware of this, but it might not be obvious.

-- Sascha
   brawer at acm.org