Today: Distributed Objects

•  Case study: EJBs (Enterprise Java Beans)

•  Case study: CORBA

Computer Science CS677: Distributed OS Lecture 23, page 1

Distributed Objects

•  Figure 10-1. Common organization of a remote

object with client-side proxy.

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 Distributed Objects vs. RPC

RPC : Remote Procedure Call

–  Provides argument marshalling / unmarshalling
–  Server handles invocation
Distributed Objects
–  Remote methods on remote objects
–  RPC + distributed object references

Distributed object operation:

–  Server side: create object, register it (register with what?) (always in this
order?)
–  Client side: get object reference (from where?), invoke method

Computer Science CS677: Distributed OS Lecture 23, page 3

Distributed Objects through History

ONC RPC DCOM EJB

DCE RPC CORBA

A brief and incomplete history of
Java RMI
commercially used RPC and
distributed object systems

The vision The reality

a Grand Distributed System Client/Server

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 Naming: Object References
CORBA object reference

•  Interoperable object reference: language-independent techniques

for referring to objects

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Object references and Naming

•  First versions of CORBA used opaque object references

–  How do you locate the object? Via a location service.
–  What is the interface to the location service?
–  How do you invoke the location service?

•  Java (and CORBA 3.0) use transparent object references

–  Can be decoded at the client
–  Java reference can encode all information (e.g. code) needed to invoke an
object.

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 Binding

•  Static vs. Dynamic binding

–  What is the difference?
–  Advantages of static binding?
–  Of dynamic binding?

•  What state is involved in client binding?

–  What happens if the client crashes?
–  The server?

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Example: Enterprise Java Beans

•  Figure 10-2. General

architecture of an EJB
server.

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 Parts of an EJB

•  Home interface:
–  Object creation, deletion
–  Location of persistent objects (entity beans)
–  Object identifier is class-managed

•  Remote interface
–  “business logic”
–  i.e. the object itself

•  Terminology differences
–  Client/server -> web applications

Computer Science CS677: Distributed OS Lecture 23, page 9

Four Types of EJBs

•  Stateless session beans

•  Stateful session beans
•  Entity beans
•  Message-driven beans

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 Overview of CORBA

•  Common Object Request Broker Architecture

–  Specification of a distributed middleware
–  Specs drawn up by Object Management Group (OMG)
–  http://www.omg.org
•  Goal: Interoperability with distributed applications on various
platforms

Computer Science CS677: Distributed OS Lecture 23, page 11

CORBA Overview

•  Object request broker (ORB)

–  Core of the middleware platform
–  Handles communication between objects and clients
–  Handles distribution and heterogeneity issues
–  May be implemented as libraries
•  Facilities: composition of CORBA services

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 Object Model

•  Objects & services specified using an Interface Definition language (IDL)

–  Used to specify interface of objects and/or services
•  ORB: run-time system that handles object-client communication
•  Dynamic invocation interface: allows object invocation at run-time
–  Generic invoke operation: takes object reference as input
–  Interface repository stores all interface definitions

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CORBA Services
•  Collection service: group objects into lists, queues,..
•  Query service: use query language to query for service(s)
•  Concurrency control service: locking services
•  Event service: interrupt upon a specific event
•  Many more…

•  Q: Do CORBA objects have a corresponding class?

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 Corba Services
Service Description
Collection Facilities for grouping objects into lists, queue, sets, etc.
Query Facilities for querying collections of objects in a declarative manner
Concurrency Facilities to allow concurrent access to shared objects
Transaction Flat and nested transactions on method calls over multiple objects
Event Facilities for asynchronous communication through events
Notification Advanced facilities for event-based asynchronous communication
Externalization Facilities for marshaling and unmarshaling of objects
Life cycle Facilities for creation, deletion, copying, and moving of objects
Licensing Facilities for attaching a license to an object
Naming Facilities for systemwide name of objects
Property Facilities for associating (attribute, value) pairs with objects
Trading Facilities to publish and find the services on object has to offer
Persistence Facilities for persistently storing objects
Relationship Facilities for expressing relationships between objects
Security Mechanisms for secure channels, authorization, and auditing
Time Provides the current time within specified error margins

Computer Science CS677: Distributed OS Lecture 23, page 15

Object Invocation Models

Request type Failure semantics Description

Synchronous At-most-once Caller blocks until a response is returned

or an exception is raised

One-way Best effort delivery Caller continues immediately without

waiting for any response from the server

Deferred At-most-once Caller continues immediately and can

synchronous later block until response is delivered

•  Invocation models supported in CORBA.

–  Original model was RMI/RPC-like
–  Current CORBA versions support additional semantics

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 What went wrong with CORBA?

•  Where is it now?
–  Inside EJB, I think
–  Gnome desktop
–  Embedded CORBA?

•  Design by committee
–  Competing commercial interests
–  … time to go teach….

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Event and Notification Services (1)

•  The logical organization of suppliers and consumers of events,

following the push-style model.

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 Event and Notification Services (2)

•  The pull-style model for event delivery in CORBA.

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Messaging: Async. Method Invocation

•  CORBA's callback model for asynchronous method invocation.

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 Messaging (2)

•  CORBA'S polling model for asynchronous method invocation.

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Portable Object Adaptor (1)

•  POA: Wrappers for server-side code (makes code look like objects)
a)  The POA supports multiple servants.
b)  The POA supports a single servant.
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 Portable Object Adaptor (2)

My_servant *my_object; // Declare a reference to a C++ object

CORBA::Objectid_var oid; // Declare a CORBA identifier
my_object = new MyServant; // Create a new C++ object
oid = poa ->activate_object (my_object);
// Register C++ object as CORBA OBJECT

•  Changing a C++ object into a CORBA object.

Computer Science CS677: Distributed OS Lecture 23, page 23

An Example Architecture
•  An example architecture of a fault-tolerant CORBA system.

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 Replication Frameworks (1)

•  Invocations to objects are intercepted at three

different points:
•  At the client side just before the invocation is passed
to the stub.
•  Inside the client’s stub, where the interception forms
part of the replication algorithm.
•  At the server side, just before the object is about to be
invoked.

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Replication Frameworks (2)

•  Figure 10-16. A general framework for separating replication algorithms from

objects in an EJB environment.

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 Replicated Invocations (1)

•  Figure 10-17. The problem of replicated method invocations.

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Replicated Invocations (2)

•  Figure 10-18. (a) Forwarding an

invocation request from a
replicated object to another
replicated object.

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 Replicated Invocations (3)

•  Figure 10-18. (b) Returning a

reply from one replicated object
to another.

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