CORBA Lacks Venom

Distributed objects bring to distributed computing such desirable properties of modularisation, abstraction and reuse easing the burden of development and maintenance by diminishing the gap between implementation and real-world objects. Distributed objects, however, need a consistent framework in which inter-object communication may take place. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a distributed object standard. CORBA’s primary protocol is the Internet Interoperable Object Protocol limited to blocked synchronous remote procedure calls, over TCP/IP which is inappropriate for systems requiring timely guarantees. The Real-time Wide Area Network Dissemination Architecture Protocol (RWANDA) overcomes the synchronous limitation by building on top of an asynchronous group communication model where applications only pay for required quality of service (QoS) such as multicast, virtual synchrony and encrypted communication. In RWANDA, information sources use channels to disseminate information to a potentially large and changing set of channel subscribers. RWANDA recognises the differing media characteristics and transport requirements of multimedia by providing a protocol composition framework that extends to incorporate yet unsupported communication protocols, qualities of service and optimised multimedia stacks. RWANDA provides an asynchronous foundation necessary for developing a large scale wide area network continuous media protocol.