Service Management in DISCWorld using CORBA and Java

Services within the DISCWorld system can be represented by objects. These services may be distributed on nodes of a heterogeneous system, with communication between clients and these services and also between the services themselves, provided by a suitable middleware system. As well as managing communication, a middleware system has to provide for locating and activating services, gathering performance data and security. We describe how the CORBA 2.0 specification, developed by the OMG, and CORBAServices can be used as a basis for a middleware system to manage DISCWorld Services. We also describe how Java and Java RMI can be used in combination with CORBA and what benefits this brings. We discuss some of the problems with the mapping of the CORBA interface definition language, IDL, to Java.