[omniORB] question on usage of omniORB

[Duncan Grisby]

On Tue 4 March, Attila Pletyak wrote:

> BTW: The name server provided by omniORB is not for heavy loads, it can
> be used in most situations, but if you have a very demanding
> environment, I believe, corbaloc could do a better work. Duncan, please
> correct me if I am wrong.

omniNames won't cope with thousands of requests per second, but you
probably shouldn't be trying to use a naming service that heavily.
It's always best to structure your application so a few top-level
objects are registered in the naming service or somewhere similar
(like command line IORs), and the top-level objects are used to find
other objects.

A lot of CORBA proponents seem to be in denial about the fact that
finding out about the world on start-up is a problem. Many will insist
that using corbaloc or command line IORs "breaks the object model" and
should be avoided. I think that's ridiculous. You should us the right
tools for the job. If it's most sensible in your application to
hard-code IORs or corbaloc URIs to initial objects, then do that.

Other possibilities are things like sending a broadcast UDP packet,
and getting a UDP response containing an IOR from the machine that
knows the correct answer. Shock-horror, not using CORBA at all!  On a
similar note, if you want to check if a machine is still alive, ping
it with ICMP ping or UDP, rather than trying to use CORBA, which is
totally inappropriate.

Cheers,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --