PolyORB/ANNOUNCE

Announcing the release of PolyORB 1.0p
======================================

Ada Core Technologies, ACT Europe, and the PolyORB team are proud to
announce the first public release of PolyORB:
  PolyORB 1.0p (http://libre.adacore.com/polyorb/).

This release contains a CORBA-compliant instantiation of the PolyORB
generic middleware. It includes:

* an IDL to Ada 95 compiler,

* implementations of the
  Portable Object Adapter (POA),
  Dynamic Skeleton Interface (DSI),
  Dynamic Invocation Interface (DII),
  and Interface Repository (IR),

* implementations of the COS Naming, COS Event and COS Time services,

* implementations of GIOP 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2.

This CORBA implementation can be configured for full tasking,
Ravenscar tasking or no tasking runtime, depending on the level of
desired functionality for the application, and on the resource
constraints for the target.

This release should be considered as a stable implementation of CORBA
middleware over PolyORB.

Other instantiations of PolyORB are available in the public PolyORB
CVS repository for testing purposes. They will be included in future
releases.

PolyORB is primarily developed by Jérôme Hugues, Thomas Vergnaud, and
Laurent Pautet (Télécom Paris), and Thomas Quinot (ACT Europe).
Fabrice Kordon (LIP6) also participates in the project.

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			       POLYORB

Distributed applications and middleware
---------------------------------------

PolyORB aims at providing a uniform solution to build distributed
applications; relying either on industrial-strength middleware
standards such as CORBA, the Distributed System Annex of Ada 95,
distribution programming paradigms such as Web Services, Message
Oriented Middleware (MOM), or to implement application-specific
middleware.

Middleware provides a framework that hides the complex issues of
distribution, and offers the programmer high-level abstractions that
allow easy and transparent construction of distributed applications.
A number of different standards exist for creating object-oriented
distributed applications. These standards define two subsystems that
enable interaction between application partitions:

    * the API seen by the developer's applicative objects;

    * the protocol used by the middleware environment to interact with
      other nodes in the distributed application.

Middleware implementations also offer programming guidelines as well as
development tools to ease the construction of large heterogeneous
distributed systems. Many issues typical to distributed programming may
still arise: application architectural choice, configuration
or deployment. Since there is no "one size fits all" architecture,
choosing the adequate distribution middleware in its most appropriate
configuration is a key design point that dramatically impacts the
design and performance of an application.

Consequently, applications need to rapidly tailor middleware to the
specific distribution model they require. A distribution model is
defined by the combination of distribution mechanisms made available
to the application. Common examples of such mechanisms are Remote
Procedure Call (RPC), Distributed Objects or Message Passing. A
distribution infrastructure or middleware refers to software that
supports one (or several) distribution model, e.g.: OMG CORBA, Java
Remote Method Invocation (RMI), the Distributed System Annex of Ada
95, Java Message Service (MOM).


PolyORB: a generic middleware with an instance per distribution model
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Typical middleware implementations for one platform support only one
set of such interfaces, pre-defined configuration capabilities and
cannot interoperate with other platforms. In addition to traditional
middleware implementations, PolyORB proposes an original architecture
to enable support for multiple interoperating distribution models in a
uniform canvas.

PolyORB is a polymorphic, reusable infrastructure for building or
prototyping new middleware adapted to specific application needs. It
provides a set of components on top of which various instances can be
elaborated. These instances (or personalities) are views on PolyORB
facilities that are compliant to existing standards, either at the API
level (application personality) or at the protocol level (protocol
personality). These personalities are mutually exclusive views of the
same architecture.

The decoupling of application and protocol personalities, and the
support for multiple simultaneous personalities within the same
running middleware, are key features required for the construction of
interoperable distributed applications. This allows PolyORB to
communicate with middleware that implement different distribution
standards: PolyORB provides middleware-to-middleware interoperability
(M2M).

PolyORB's modularity allows for easy extension and replacement of its
core and personality components, in order to meet specific requirements.
In this way, standard or application-specific personalities can be
created in a streamlined process, from early stage prototyping to
full-featured implementation. The PolyORB architecture also allows
the automatic, just-in-time creation of proxies between incompatible
environments.

PolyORB currently supports the following personalities (in the main
development branch, available through CVS access):

    * application personalities: CORBA, Distributed System Annex of
      Ada 95 (DSA), MOMA - MOM for Ada. Interaction between CORBA and
      DSA partitions has been successfully tested;

    * protocol personalities: SOAP, GIOP (CORBA generic protocol
      layer) and the following instantiations: IIOP (over TCP/IP), DIOP
      (over UDP/IP for oneway requests), and MIOP/UIPMC (group
      communication over multicast/IP)

    * under development: Web Services personality, an adaptation of
      the AWS API to PolyORB.

Note: PolyORB is the project formerly known as DROOPI, a Distributed
Reusable Object-Oriented Polymorphic Infrastructure.