A configurable protocol architecture for CORBA environments

This paper describes a flexible architecture for building the protocols required to allow interaction between distributed objects in a CORBA environment. A key feature of the architecture is its ability to select the elements of a protocol stack dynamically at bind-time depending on the properties of the interface being accessed. This permits multiple object-invocation protocols to coexist such that a system may support local, intra-ORB and inter-ORB protocols and allows the selection of the most appropriate protocol at run-time. In addition, the architecture is capable of supporting “non-standard” interaction protocols such as multimedia streams. The paper outlines the architectural principles used and describes an efficient implementation of the CORBA Internet Inter-Orb Protocol.