Loadable smart proxies and native-code shipping for CORBA

Abstract

Middleware platforms such as CORBA are widely considered as a promising technology path towards a universal service market. For now, however, no mechanisms are offered for dynamically integrating service-specific code (so-called smart proxies) at the client which is a major prerequisite for the development of generic clients that may connect to different service implementations offering different quality-of-service guarantees. In this paper, we therefore demonstrate how support for smart proxies can be integrated within CORBA by means of a native-code ship- ping service that only relies on the recent objects-by-value extension and portable-interceptors proposal. The feasibility of this approach is shown by a smart-proxy supported video service. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000.