[omniORB] Getting Exception when accessing IFR of Orbix 2.3from omniORB2_2.8pre2

[Sai-Lai Lo]

A developer once told me the way he solved interoperability problem
with code running on top of Orbix 2.3 with the rest of the world is to
build a "bridge" using Orbix 3.0. The bridge implements the same set of IDLs
and the implementation simply forward the requests to the Orbix 2.3
servers. Presumably this is OK because 3.x talks the old orbix protocol and
IIOP well enough.

Sai-Lai 


>>>>> Michael P Miale writes:

> This was posted in September of '99:
> It seems to me a futile exercise to try to interoperate with
> Orbix. Afterall, Orbix does not even interoperate with OrbixWeb, their own
> product.
> You best bet is to use another interface repository, I use the IR that
> comes with Visibroker for java.
> If it is your company's policy to use Orbix, you have to start making noise
> with Iona to make it known to them that the state of Orbix is unacceptable.
> This is what I guess is happening:
> 1. The IOR contains a type ID "IDL:IT_Repository:1.0", which is Iona'a own
> invention. The type ID for an OMG IR is "IDL:omg.org/CORBA/Repository:1.0".
> That is alright because omniORB will give it the benefit of doubt and
> create an object reference.
> 2. When you try to narrow the object reference to a Repository object
> reference. Because the type ID is not what the ORB expected, it contacts
> the IR with the operation _is_a to verify if the object is indeed an
> OMG IR. At this point, my bet is Orbix doesn't know how to deal with
> the _is_a operation or it doesn't know it is supposed to response with
> TRUE. And it throws an UNKNOWN system exception!
> Sometimes, it makes you wonder what is the point to pay money for these
> off-the-shelf products when a simple task such as this becomes such a time
> consuming exercise...
> Sai-Lai

> Is this still true of omniOrb 3.0?  I have been trying to get an omniOrb
> client to connect to an Orbix server without any luck at all so far.

> 	-Michael Miale
> 	General Dynamics Information Systems