omniORB 2.7.1 Release Notes

This release is a minor release which fixes a number of bugs in omniORB 2.7.0, and adds a missing feature (see below). The last release was 2.7.0 (20th Jan 1999). The previous major release was 2.6.1 (20th Oct 1998).

A summary of changes since the last release is here.

omniORB2 is copyright AT&T Laboratories, Cambridge. It is free software. The programs in omniORB2 are distributed under the GNU General Public Licence as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the file COPYING for copying permission of these programs. The libraries in omniORB2 are distributed under the GNU Library General Public Licence. See the file COPYING.LIB for copying permission of these libraries.

omniORB2 contains source code that is derived from the SunSoft OMG IDL Compiler Front End (CFE) version 1.3. The IDL CFE is copyright Sun Microsystems and is distributed here under the terms and conditions written in the file src/tool/omniidl2/COPYING.CFE.

README files

README.win32 - contains important information on building and using omniORB2 on Windows NT and Windows 95.
README.unix - contains important information on building and using omniORB2 on Unix platforms.
README.openvms - contains important information on building and using omniORB2 on openVMS.
README.linux - contains further information on using omniORB2 on linux.
README.egcs - contains information on building omniORB2 with egcs-1.0.
README.ETSKernel - contains important information on building and using omniORB2 with Phar Lap's ETS kernel.
PORTING - contains instructions on porting omniORB2.
CHANGES_261 - contains details of changes from 2.5.0 to 2.6.1.
CHANGES_250 - contains details of changes from 2.4.0 to 2.5.0.
CHANGES_240 - contains details of changes from 2.2.0 to 2.4.0.

Technical Highlights

omniORB2 is an Object Request Broker (ORB) which implements specification 2.0 of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA).

C++ language bindings are supported. The mapping conforms to the latest revision of the CORBA specification.
The Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) is used as the native protocol.
The omniORB2 runtime is fully multithreaded. It uses native platform thread support encapsulated with a small class library, omnithread, to abstract away from differences in native thread APIs.
TypeCode and type Any are supported.
DynAny is supported (CORBA 2.2)
The Dynamic Invocation and Dynamic Skeleton interfaces are supported
A COS Naming Service, omniNames, is provided.
The following platforms are supported:
- Solaris 2.{5,6}/ Sun SparcCompiler C++ version 4.2
- x86 Windows NT / Windows 95 / Visual C++ version 5.0 (and also version 6.0)
- Alpha Windows NT/ Visual C++ version 5.0
- Linux 2.0 (x86)/ GNU C++ compiler version 2.7.2 /libc-5/Linuxthreads 0.5
- Linux 2.0 (x86)/egcs-1.1.1/binutils-2.9.1.0.14/GNU Libc version 2
- Digital Unix 3.2/ DEC C++ compiler version 5.5
- Digital Unix 4.0D/ DEC C++ compiler version 6.0
Ports to the following platforms are available. These ports are done by external contributors and have been inte grated into the source tree. For these platforms, no pre-compiled binary is available.

IBM AIX 4.2/ IBM C Set++ 3.1.4
HPUX 10.20/ aC++ (B3910 A.01.04)
OpenVMS Alpha 6.2/ DEC C++ compiler 5.5 (UCX 4.1 ECO 8)
OpenVMS Vax 6.1/ DEC C++ compiler 5.5 (UCX 4.0 ECO 1)
NextStep 3.3/ gcc-2.7.2
Reliant Unix 5.43/CDS++
SCO OpenServer 5/g++
Phar Lap's Real Time ETS Kernel
SGI Irix 6.x/SGI C++ compiler 7.2

Ports to LynOS and Mac OS are known to exist but they have not been integrated into the source tree.

It should be straightforward to port omniORB2 to any platform which supports POSIX style threads, BSD style sockets and has a decent C++ compiler which supports exceptions.

It has been tested for interoperability via IIOP with other ORBs, such as Iona Orbix 2.2 MT, Iona OrbixWeb 2.0.1, Visigenic Visibroker for C++, and HP ORB Plus 2.5.

Work in progress

omniORB2 is not yet a complete implementation of the CORBA core. The following features are not supported in the current release.

The Portable Object Adapter.

Missing features

The following features are missing from omniORB2. We are not currently planning on adding support for these features.

The BOA only supports the persistent server activation policy. Other dynamic activation and deactivation polices are not supported.
omniORB2 does not has its own Interface Repository. However any CORBA compliant Interface Repository can be used with omniORB2.

Installation

Installation instructions are provided in the following files:

README.unix for all unix platforms
README.win32 for Windows NT and Windows 95

Documentation

omniORB2 user guides are located in the ./doc directory. They are available in latex, postscript, acrobat and html formats. Latest versions are available here .
Man pages for the programs in this distribution are located in ./man directory.
README files are provided throughout the distribution tree. They provide specific information about the directories and files, tools and examples. You may want to explore the tree to become familiar with the information provided in the README files.

Examples

Example programs that demonstrate the use of omniORB2 are located in ./src/examples.

Contact

If you have any queries, suggestions and problems in using omniORB2, contact [email protected]. We'd like to hear from you.

The latest version of omniORB2 is available from our Web pages:

http://www.uk.research.att.com/omniORB/omniORB.html

There is also a mailing list: [email protected].

This list carries announcements of new releases and provides a forum for omniORB2 users and developers to discuss the usage and future development of omniORB2.

If you want to add yourself to this mailing list, send the following command in the body of your email to "[email protected]":

    subscribe

The archives of the mailing list are available here .

For comments, feedback, etc, please see the 'Keeping in touch' page.
Copyright 1999 - AT&T Laboratories Cambridge

omniORB 2.7.1