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: http://www.adass.org/adass/proceedings/adass00/O3-04/
Дата изменения: Tue May 29 20:18:45 2001 Дата индексирования: Tue Oct 2 05:39:03 2012 Кодировка: |
This paper presents the prototype developed at CDS using CORBA for interconnecting different services in a heterogeneous context of several operating systems and different languages. Ease of development and problems encountered are assessed.
A CORBA class is defined by its interface, specifying in the Interface Data Language (IDL), the methods, their parameters and return values to be used on the client side and to be implemented on the server side. An IDL compiler produces the stub code needed by the client programme to call the object method implemented on its side, and the skeleton code interfacing the implemented methods on the server side.
Once the stub is available on the client side and the CORBA object is created, the methods are called in the same way as if they were normal objects defined and used in an application. The server developer implements the methods, i.e., writes their code as for any class. Figure 1 shows this architecture.
One of the main characteristic of CORBA is its ability to work well in an heterogeneous world: client and server may run on different hardware under different operating systems, have their applications written in different languages and be implemented in different CORBA environments from different providers.
This makes CORBA particularly well suited for astronomy where every data provider and user has their own computing environment. CORBA allows communication in every situation and facilitates the development of interfaces for interoperability between data providers.
There are already many interactions between applications in astronomy: services like NED, ADS or CDS/SIMBAD have developed packages allowing client/server queries. Such packages generally require use of a specific language and have a proprietary protocol.
It is obvious that the need for interoperability will increase in the future: Virtual Observatories, Data Mining tools, Remote Observing and Data integration systems are developments that will require interaction between heterogeneous services to improve their functionality and efficiency (Graybeal 2001).
Before using CORBA for interoperability on a large scale, the CDS began by experimenting with it for internal services that have long been interoperating through classical client/server architecture.
The experiment consisted of two server extensions (see Figure 2): (1) addition of CORBA classes to the SIMBAD prototype using Objectivity/DB (written in C++ so that the required CORBA classes were easy to develop; Wenger et al. 2000) and (2) encapsulation of the VizieR interface (written in C and using the Sybase relational DBMS; (Ochsenbein et al. 2000)) for querying catalogues by identifier.
Two clients were developed in this experiment: a simple server package written in C++ for querying SIMBAD through the CORBA class, and a graphical user interface written in JAVA to query both SIMBAD and VizieR through the CORBA classes.
This prototype incorporated several key features:
The entire system was developed and implemented within a few months. Use of different subsystems in the prototype uncovered three interesting technical problems: (1) an incompatibility between the compilers required by a CORBA tool and Objectivity/DB, (2) an interference between the Standard Template Library (STL: template classes provided only as C++ header files) and a mini-STL used by one CORBA environment (MICO) and (3) a ``buggy'' interaction between the threading mechanisms used by the CORBA tools and by Objectivity/DB.
Bypassing these problems required moving from one CORBA tool to another and also implementing a three-tier architecture - this also allowed better independence between the server components (see Figure 3), leaving CORBA classes between fully mastered pieces of code and helping to solve some incompatibilities with pre-existing packages.
A follow-up to this experiment could consist of defining some standard classes for querying each concerned service. Query language, parameter syntax and return values build the standard. The XML language could be an important element of this standard for exchanging data through CORBA classes. Distributing an IDL file is enough to allow users to access the CORBA services.
Generalization to more applications would be a first step towards the definition of business classes in Astronomy like those that already exist in other disciplines such as Medicine (CORBAmed) and Biology (Life Science Research).
Ochsenbein, F. et al. 2000, A&AS, 143, 23
Wenger, M. et al. 2000, in ASP Conf. Ser., Vol. 216, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems IX, ed. N. Manset, C. Veillet, & D. Crabtree (San Francisco: ASP), 247
Graybeal, J. 2001, this volume, 189
