If you are new to CORBA, or want to refresh your memory, you will probably find it useful to read this chapter before using the orb library. On the other hand, if you are already comfortable with the concepts listed below, you might prefer to skip to Chapter 27, "Using the orb Library."
How does the library fit into the big picture of CORBA? Here's a quick look. The sections that follow provide more detailed information on each of these concepts.
The Object Management Group (OMG) is an international standards group that publishes the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standards.
CORBA defines a distributed computing model. Two of its components are Object Request Brokers (ORBs) and the Interface Definition Language (IDL).
ORBs serve as middleware that establishes client-server relationships between objects.
IDL is a language that lets you describe a server object's interface without regard for the language in which the object is implemented.
Orbix is an ORB, created by IONA Technologies Limited. Orbix includes the opaque mechanism, which allows an ORB to pass an object by value. The orb library provides a way to help you pass C++ objects as Orbix opaque types, allowing easy streaming of objects.
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