Mapping Enterprise Roles to CORBA Objects Using Trader

Abstract

The ODP Enterprise Language concept of Role provides a useful abstraction for behaviour in a context that is independent of how the behaviour is enacted in a run time system. In CORBA implementations of ODP systems a client object reference variable is analogous to a Role – it is a placeholder for an object whose behaviour is specified by an IDL type. The DSTC UML Profile for Enterprise Distributed Object Computing expresses the Role concept as a UML Action, which is a placeholder for behaviour in UML, and has an attribute representing constraints on the objects that may perform the behaviour (fill the Role). CORBA Object reference variables are assigned to object references using some “bootstrapping mechanism”, implemented by a programmer, perhaps using a Trader or Naming Service to locate suitable objects. For the first time in UML, the DSTC EDOC Profile allows designers to specify Roles independent of the class of objects that may perform the Roles. Designers also specify which objects are appropriate for filling which Roles. Furthermore the mapping of this Profile to CORBA technology allows automatic generation of Trader query code to bootstrap the object references of a distributed application according to the high-level design, not the whims of the programmer.

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