[omniORB] Announcement - omniORB 2.7.1 - free CORBA 2 ORB now available

[David Riddoch]

       ********************************************************
       *******  Free CORBA 2 ORB for C++ available now  *******
       ********************************************************


At last, another release of possibly the fastest CORBA 2 ORB available ...

                           omniORB  2.7.1


This release is a minor (bug fix) release.


omniORB is copyright AT&T Laboratories Cambridge (formerly the Olivetti
and Oracle Research Laboratory). It is free software. The programs in
omniORB2 are distributed under the GNU General Public Licence as published
by the Free Software Foundation. The libraries in omniORB2 are distributed
under the GNU Library General Public Licence.


Source code and binary distributions are available from our Web pages:

   http://www.uk.research.att.com/omniORB/omniORB.html


Technical Highlights
====================

omniORB2 implements specification 2.0 of the Common Object Request 
Broker Architecture (CORBA).

    - C++ language bindings are supported. The mapping conforms to 
      the revision 2.0 of the CORBA specification.

    - The Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) is used as the native
      protocol.

    - The omniORB2 runtime is fully multithreaded. It uses native
      platform thread support encapsulated with a small class library,
      omnithread, to abstract away from differences in native thread
      APIs.

    - `Typecode' and the type `Any' are supported.

    - The Dynamic Invocation and Dynamic Skeleton interfaces are
      supported.

    - DynAny (CORBA 2.2) is supported.

    - A COS Naming Service, omniNames, is provided.

    - The following platforms are supported:
 
      o Solaris 2.5 / Sun SparcCompiler C++ version 4.2
      o Solaris 2.6/ Sun SparcCompiler C++ version 4.2
      o Digital Unix 3.2 / DEC C++ compiler version 5.5
      o Digital Unix 4.0D/ DEC C++ compiler version 6.0
      o x86 Linux 2.0 / GNU C++ compiler version 2.7.2 / Linuxthreads
        0.5
      o x86 Linux 2.0 /egcs-1.1b/binutils-2.9.1.0.14/GNU Libc version 2
      o x86 Windows NT / Windows 95 / Visual C++ version 5.0
      o Alpha NT / Visual C++ version 5.0

      Ports to the following platforms are available. These ports are
      done by external contributors and have been integrated into the
      source tree. For these platforms, no pre-compiled binary is
      available.

      o IBM AIX 4.2/ IBM C Set++ 3.1.4
      o HPUX 10.20/ aC++ (B3910 A.01.04)
      o OpenVMS Alpha 6.2/ DEC C++ compiler 5.5  (UCX 4.1 ECO 8)
      o OpenVMS Vax 6.1/ DEC C++ compiler 5.5  (UCX 4.0 ECO 1)
      o NextStep 3.3/ gcc-2.7.2
      o Reliant Unix 5.43/CDS++
      o SCO OpenServer 5/g++
      o Phar Lap's Real Time ETS Kernel
      o SGI Irix 6.x/SGI C++ compiler 7.2

      The ports to Mac OS is known to exist. However, the 
      ports have not been merged into the source tree yet.

      It should be straightforward to port omniORB2 to any platform 
      which supports POSIX style threads, BSD style sockets and has a 
      decent C++ compiler which supports exceptions.

    - It has been tested for interoperability via IIOP with other ORBs, 
      such as Iona Orbix 2.2 MT, Iona OrbixWeb 2.0.1, 
      Visigenic Visibroker for C++, and HP ORB Plus 2.5.


Work in progress
================

omniORB2 is not yet a complete implementation of the CORBA 2.2 core.
The following features are not supported in the current release.
Support for these features will be included shortly in a future
release of omniORB2.

    - The Portable Object Adapter (POA) is not supported

    - GIOP 1.1 is not supported.


Missing features
================

The following features are missing from omniORB2. We are not 
currently planning on adding support for these features.

    - The BOA only supports the persistent server activation policy.
      Other dynamic activation and deactivation polices are not
      supported.

    - omniORB2 does not have its own Interface Repository.