Hi folks,

I have written and documented some utilities (called the "CORBA
Utilities" package) that I find quite useful in my consultancy work and
my employer (IONA) is allowing me to publicly release them.

The utilities have been compiled and tested on Windows 2000 with Orbix
(C++ and Java), ORBacus (C++ and Java), TAO and omniORB. I think that
it will be quite easy for people to port these utilities to other
operating systems and/or CORBA products.

You can find full details, and download the utilities, from the
following URL:

http://www.iona.com/devcenter/corba/utilities.htm

The download is a 560KB .zip file that contains: (1) full C++ and Java
source code, (2) a precompiled Java .jar file, (3) javadoc
documentation, and (4) 100 pages of PDF documentation.

The main changes since the previous version that was on the web site
are as follows:

- Support for TAO and omniORB.

- The PoaUtility class has been enhanced so that it now provides a
*portable* way to deploy a server in a flexible manner: with or
without an implementation repository and (independently of that)
have the server listen on a fixed or random port.

- Rather than provide documentation in 7 separate PDF files (one
for each utility), all the documentation has now been packaged as
one book that has 7 chapters.

- An Orbix-specific Tcl script that reconfigures the Naming
Service so that it listens on a fixed port.

Here is a brief summary of what is in the CORBA Utilities package:

- A class that simplifies the construction of POA hierarchies and
makes it easy to deploy a server in any of several different
ways (with or without an implementation repository and on a fixed
or random port).

- Utility functions called importObjRef() and exportObjRef() that
allow you to decide at runtime (rather than at development time)
if you want to import/export object references via files, the
Naming Service or some other mechanism.

- An easy-to-understand explanation of the "corbaloc" and
"corbaname" URLs.

- A thin portability layer that encapsulates the names of C++
CORBA-product-specific header files.

- A C++ class library that simplifies synchronization. This library
has no dependency on CORBA (so you can use it in non-CORBA
applications).

- Some useful tips on how to make the Windows "command" window
easier to use.

- Some Tcl scripts that dramatically simplify Orbix administration.

Many of the above issues come up periodically on CORBA-related
newsgroups and mailing lists.


Regards,
Ciaran.