[omniORB] Use of _non_existent

[Wilson Jimmy - jiwils]

I've been using _non_existent to determine if an object is around or not for
some time, and today I was told that was an invalid way to do this (the
servants are using TAO 1.1.6).  I was quoted the following from the CORBA
bible.  I do not have the book, so I was curious if some on this list could
enlighten me as to what context (no pun intended) this quote is taken from:

The use of _non_existent is not a valid way of determination of validity of
one of the director objects because we have not overidden the _non_existent
call, and the default behavior of this call is *false* (p 453 Advanced Corba
Programming in C++, Henning & Vinoski).

What is the exact quote?  The above mixes opinion with fact I feel sure.
Especially the presence of 'we' in the first sentence.

Does a servant implementation have to always override _non_existent?  I
thought that typically an ORB would handle a non_existent request not the
actual servant.  Even so, if false is the default implementation doesn't
that really give me the behavior I want?  If _non_existent returns false by
default that is great so long as I can get to the object.  A false would
indicate that happened.  If _non_existent throws an exception, then I know
that I am not guaranteed that it exists or is reachable.  Have I
misinterpreted here?  I even check the comp.object.corba newsgroup and Michi
Henning's posts seem to indicate that I have interpreted correctly.

Thanks for your input.

> Jimmy
> -- 
> James "Jimmy" Wilson
> Software Developer, Acxiom Corporation


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