[omniORB] Corba-to-COM bridge

[JHJE (Jan Holst Jensen)]

> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 10:24:47 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Xueming Wu <xwu at cse.unl.edu>
> Subject: [omniORB] Corba-to-COM bridge
> To: omniorb-list at omniorb-support.com
> Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0405061017230.24234-100000 at cse.unl.edu>
[...]
> I have some CORBA components and COM components. And some
> of CORBA components need to call some of the COM components.
> How can the CORBA object call the COM object and get return
> result from the COM object? Is there any example? Could I
> develop a bridge or I have to use a commercial one?
> 
> Any suggestion?

Hi Xueming.

>From my experience, calling into COM from a CORBA server tends to work
fine. You just let the CORBA server be a COM client too. Take care of
threading issues, as the threading models of COM and CORBA are very
different to say the least. A particular COM server I used within a
CORBA server was not thread-safe so I had to serialize all access to it,
but that largely took care of it. I would think that your success rate
will depend on how well-behaved the COM server is.

I tried out IONA's COM-CORBA bridge a few years ago, which at that point
generated a CORBA server which did exactly the above. Worked OK. I
suppose they have more sophisticated tools now if they are still in that
market.

Hope this helps.

-- Jan Holst Jensen, Novo Nordisk A/S, Denmark