Java™ IDL (CORBA)

Java™ IDL technology adds CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) capability to the Java platform, providing standards-based interoperability and connectivity. Java IDL enables distributed Web-enabled Java applications to transparently invoke operations on remote network services using the industry standard IDL (Object Management Group Interface Definition Language) and IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol) defined by the Object Management Group. Runtime components include a Java ORB for distributed computing using IIOP communication.

Overview

API Specification

package org.omg.CORBA - provides the mapping of the OMG CORBA APIs to the Java[tm] programming language
package org.omg.CosNaming - provides the naming service for Java IDL
package org.omg.PortableServer - provides classes and interfaces for making the server side of your applications portable across multivendor ORBs
package org.omg.PortableInterceptor - provides a mechanism to register ORB hooks through which ORB services can intercept the normal flow of execution of the ORB
package org.omg.DynamicAny - provides classes and interfaces to enable Any values to be dynamically interpreted (traversed) and constructed through DynAny objects
org.omg.CORBA.ORB - provides APIs for the CORBA Object Request Broker features

Tutorials and Programmer's Guides

Most of the tutorials are variations on the basic distributed "Hello World" application.

Introductory-Level Tutorials

The following documents provide introductory-level information on creating applications that use Java IDL. All use the POA-server side model. The differences are in the server implementations.

In order to best understand the material, progress through the examples in the order presented here.

Introductory "Hello World" example using Java IDL technology
"Hello World" example with a transient server (same code as above example, less descriptive material)
"Hello World" example with a persistent server

Other server-side models may be created using JavaSE. If you'd like to use other server- side models, refer to these tutorials. Both of these tutorials use a transient server implementation.

"Hello World" example with a POA-Tie (Delegation) server-side model
"Hello World" example with an ImplBase (Inheritance) server-side model

Intermediate-Level Tutorials

The tutorials listed in this section are for developers who understand the material in the introductory-level tutorials, and are looking for more complex material.

Advanced-Level Tutorials

These tutorials are for experienced developers. The descriptive material is reduced, the sample code is commented for better understanding of the material.

Programming Guides

Additional Sample Applications

Sample Code for Hello World provides the code for all created and generated files used in the POA server-side model tutorial
Example: Interoperable Naming Service
Example: Callback Objects

API Enhancements

Changes in CORBA (Java™ IDL, Java RMI-IIOP) Features Between J2SE 1.4.x and 5.0

Tools

idlj - the IDL-to-Java compiler (command-line documentation)
orbd - a daemon process containing a Bootstrap Service, a Transient Naming Service, a Persistent Naming Service, and a Server Manager
servertool - the ease-of-use interface for application programmers to register, unregister, startup, and shutdown a server.
tnameserv - the Transient Java IDL Naming Service (provided for backward compatibility)

More Information

The CORBA Home Page

The OMG is the official source of information for all CORBA and IIOP related information. Please see the CORBA 2.3.1 Specification for more information.

For more information on which OMG specifications are implemented in this release of the Java platform, see the compliance document.

For information on product limitations in this release of the Java IDL/RMI-IIOP technologies, see Java IDL Product Limitations.

For questions, check the Java IDL FAQ.