Handling Replication mechanisms with CORBA Standard Portable Interceptors

The Object Management Group (OMG) extends standard CORBA specification to handle fault tolerance mechanisms. This extension led to the definition of a new standard: FT-CORBA, which introduces new concepts like IOGR (Interoperable Object Group Reference), and offers new programmable interfaces. The introduction of the IOGR limits the interactions with the legacy applications. Moreover, the definition of new interfaces forces developers to deal with the specification of the fault tolerant mechanisms, which could not be in their capabilities. The standard CORBA reflexive mechanisms may offer lightweight fault tolerance in a transparent way, portable and doesn’t alter the legacy applications. In this paper, we present the limits of these mechanisms, and how could we improve the fault tolerant features of the CORBA middleware using standard reflexive mechanisms like Portable Request Interceptors (PIs).