We present out first product to open source world - TomORB. TomORB is a fully functional Corba ORB for .Net Platform running on Win32 and Unix. It is not totally written from scratch. I ported this software mainly from JacORB.
TomORB is my first attempt to build a fully functional ORB for .NET. Microsoft.Net platform is good for anyone who love programming in Microsoft envorinment, but not the guys from other platforms. A common problem exists in business world, it is necessary for MS-Windows based clients to communicate with the existing legency systems built on non-Microsoft platform. It is well-known that Corba is a suitable way to fit in this task. Corba is reputable for joining heterogeous platforms together. It is why I built this corba tools for .Net platform. This project is valunable for the guys who want to connect to the EJB Application servers or the exisiting Corba servers running on non-Windows platforms. I have tested this corba ORB on Windows platform and on Linux platform with Mono. The ultimate goal of this project is to build up a Corba Component Model (CCM) server running on .Net, intend to merge the power of .Net and the power of Corba together.
Currently, TomORB supports VB.Net, C#, J# Chrome (Object Pascal) and Delphi 2006 for .Net. You can write the Corba Client or server programs in these languages. We are going to roll out more examples and tutorials to illustrate how to use TomORB. Stay tuned!
A simple tutorial is included in the package. If you have any difficulty to run TomORB, feel free to contact me.
Existing ORBs for .Net/Mono:
- CSORB - The first available C# ORB for .Net platform, released in 2002
- IIOP.Net - An IIOP communication engine by using .Net remoting architecture.
- Visibroker v7.0 - A commercial Corba ORB from Borland
Corba Related Web Sites:
- OMG Web Site - The offical Corba Web site
Other Corba ORBs:
- Mico C++ ORB - A popular C++ Corba ORB with CCM support
- JacORB - Java ORB
- Orbas - An Open Source Minimum/Realtime ORB
- Visibroker - A commercial Corba ORB for Java and C++ from Borland
- TAO - Another open source C++ ORB
- OmniORB - Open source Corba ORB for C++ and Python
- vbORB - Corba Orb for Visual Basic 6
- OpenORB - Another open source Java ORB
- Obacus - open source C++ and Java ORBs offered by IONA
- MTDORB - Corba Orb for Delphi/Kylix (win32)
- OpenCCM - Open source Java CCM from ObjectWeb
- Qedo - Open source CCM for C++
- K2 - The first commerical CCM for C++ platform, it is worth to take a look.
- StarCCM - Open Source CCM for C++
Major Corba Specification:
Existing Available .Net Compilers:
- C# (Microsoft)
- C# (Mono)
- VB.Net (Microsoft)
- J# (Microsoft)
- Delphi for .Net (CodeGear)
- Chrome (Pascal Compiler)
- Ada (A#)
- #Smalltalk
- Fortran for .Net (Fujitsu)
- Net Cobol for .Net (Fujitsu)
- Iron Python (Microsoft)
- Mico generates C++ mapping for J2ee IDL files correctly. It is possible to create a complete J2ee library for Mico. (Jul 8, 2007)
- Offically released TomORB v1.0. (June 20, 2007)
- Target to sync the source with JacORB v2.3.0 in the next major release. (Oct 30, 2006)
- TomORB v1.0 is ready now. An maintainence update is scheduled to be released at the end of this year. (Oct 30, 2006)
- Update the documents for various IDL mapping. (Jul 10, 2006)
- Just finish the initial porting for JacORB v2.2.3, but it takes time to debug. (Feb 23, 2006)
- The exisiting Corba ORB (ported from JacORB 1.4.1) is almost bug-free, but the J2ee library is under heavy developed. It is worth to wait for the completion of J2ee library. (Feb 20, 2006)
- Chrome seems to provide different Object Pascal syntax from that offered by Borland. In this time, I cannot find out the Object Pascal specification on Chrome web site. (Mar 12, 2005)
- Try to test the delphi mapping with Chrome, but Chrome seems to provide the Object Pascal syntax different from Delphi for .Net. (Feb 3, 2005)
- Start to write some CORBA GUI utilities in GTK#, and benefit to run the same GUI application on Unix and Win32 platform. (Jan 17, 2005)
- The coming maintanence release of TomORB comes with Persistent State Service (PSS), Interface Repository (IR), Trading Service and Notification Service. The next release will be out in next month. Plan to include Security Service in the production release. (Jan 14, 2005)
- Runnning TomORB with Mono-1.0.5 on Unix platform has been certified. That means you can write a single source code and is benefit to run the same program on Win32 and Unix platform. (Jan 16, 2005 , see Get Started for details)
- Plan to provide Web Service based on the OMG Corba IDL/SOAP spec. (Dec 27, 2004)
- The first Delphi mapping have been roughly completed, will be released for public use in the next major version. (Dec 27, 2004).
- A J2EE package is under developed, it let any Corba client to use Java native-like objects to talk to EJB/RMI servers directly. This package will be released in the next beta version of TomORB. (Dec 20, 2004)
- Free book - Corba Explained Simply (June 22, 2007)
- Policy Management Framework have been released by Mico, it is worth to take a look how it provides the new security services for the corba world. (Dec 27, 2004)
- In progress
- Not ready yet, but will be released soon.