DCE++: Distributing C++-objects using OSF DCE

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of an extended distributed object-oriented environment, DCE++, on top of DCE. The design goal was to overcome some observed shortcomings of DCE namely that is only well-suited for client-server applications. Opposed to DCE DCE++ supports a uniform object model, location independent invocation of fine-grained objects, remote reference parameter passing, dynamic migration of objects between nodes, and C++ language integration. Moreover, the implementation is fully integrated with DCE, using DCE UUIDs for object identification, DCE threads for interobject concurrency, DCE RPC for remote object invocation, and the DCE Cell Directory Service (CDS) for optional retrieval of objects by name. An additional stub compiler enables automatic generation of C++-based object communication interfaces. Low-level parameter encoding is done by DCE RPC's stub generation facility using the C-based DCE interface definition language (IDL). The system has been fully implemented and tested by implementing an office application. Experiences with the existing system and performance results are also reported in the paper.