ANNOUNCE: Free CORBA 2 ORB for C++ available now

[Sai-Lai Lo]

******* Free CORBA 2 ORB for C++ available now *******

The Olivetti and Oracle Research Laboratory has made available the first
public release of omniORB (version 2.2.0). We also refer to this version
as omniORB2.

omniORB2 is copyright Olivetti & Oracle Research Laboratory. It is free
software. The programs in omniORB2 are distributed under the GNU General
Public Licence as published by the Free Software Foundation. The libraries
in omniORB2 are distributed under the GNU Library General Public
Licence.

Source code and binary distributions are available from our Web pages:

http://www.orl.co.uk/omniORB/omniORB.html

Technical Highlights
====================

omniORB2 implements specification 2.0 of the Common Object Request
Broker Architecture (CORBA).

- C++ language bindings are supported. The mapping conforms to
the latest revision of the CORBA specification.

- The Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) is used as the native protocol.

- The omniORB2 runtime is fully multithreaded. It uses native platform
thread support encapsulated with a small class library, omnithread,
to abstract away from differences in native thread APIs.

- A COS Naming Service, omniNames, is provided.

- The following platforms are supported:

o Solaris 2.5 / Sun SparcCompiler C++ version 4.2
o Digital Unix 3.2 / DEC C++ compiler version 5.5
o x86 Linux 2.0 / GNU C++ compiler version 2.7.2 / Linuxthreads 0.5
o x86 Windows NT / Windows 95 / Visual C++ version 4.2

It should be straightforward to port omniORB2 to any platform
which supports POSIX style threads, BSD style sockets and has a
decent C++ compiler which supports exceptions.

- It has been tested for interoperability via IIOP with other ORBs,
such as Iona Orbix 2.1 MT, Iona OrbixWeb 2.0.1,
Visigenic Visibroker for C++, and HP ORB Plus 2.5.

Work in progress
================

omniORB2 is not yet a complete implementation of the CORBA core. The
following features are not supported in the current release.
Support for these features will be included shortly in
a future release of omniORB2.

- `Typecode' and the type `Any' are not supported.

- The Dynamic Invocation Interface (DII) is not supported.

- The Dynamic Skeleton Interface (DSI) is not supported.

Missing features
================

The following features are missing from omniORB2. We are not
currently planning on adding support for these features.

- The BOA only supports the persistent server activation policy. Other
dynamic activation and deactivation polices are not supported.

- omniORB2 does not has its own Interface Repository.

--
E-mail: S....@orl.co.uk | Olivetti & Oracle Research Lab
| 24a Trumpington Street
Tel: +44 223 343000 | Cambridge CB2 1QA
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