Successful SOA Using CORBA

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Successful SOA Using CORBA
March 2005
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• Steve Vinoski
• Chief Engineer of Product Innovation
• I joined IONA in December 1996 to start IONA's
  US-based Engineering organization and to lead the
  development of IONA's next-generation Adaptive
  Runtime Technology (ART), a highly flexible and
  high performance distributed computing engine
  that underlies IONA's products.
• Highlights
• Authored or co-authored around 60 highly-regarded
  publications about distributed computing (see
  http//www.iona.com/hyplan/vinoski/)
• Co-author of "Advanced CORBA Programming with
  C", published in January 1999 by Addison Wesley
  Longman
• Co-author of the popular "Object
  Interconnections" column on distributed object
  computing for the C/C Users Journal since 1995
• Author of the "Toward Integration" middleware
  column for the IEEE Internet Computing magazine
  since 2002
• A frequent conference speaker, I travel to many
  parts of the world giving tutorials and keynote
  speeches about middleware topics such as CORBA,
  ART, and Web Services

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IONA at a glance
Customers include worlds largest firms

• 80 of Global Telecom
• 70 of Financial Services in Global 100
• Blue Chip System Integrator Partners

Solid business with a history of profitable growth

• Founded in 1991
• Publicly traded since 1997
• Profitable business model

NASDAQIONA
Worldwide presence

• EMEA HQ in Dublin, Ireland
• US HQ in Massachusetts
• APAC HQ in Tokyo, Japan

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Orbix is Everywhere

• From car dashboardsto mainframes
• Hospital expense administration
• Laboratory information management
• Telephone switches
• Nationwide online brokerage systems
• Credit card clearance
• Hubble Space Telescope
• Jet aircraft flight surfaces
• Command control
• Subway management and communications

Healthcare Applications
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Commitment to CORBACustomer Satisfaction is our
key Priority

• Extending our support options
• 5 years support for the latest versions of our
  CORBA products
• Purchase 5 year Standard, Silver or Gold Support
  contracts up front from IONA
• Assurance of support on these platforms for as
  long as you need it
• Platform Support
• We now offer Orbix on more platforms than ever
  before
• We support the older versions from OS vendors as
  well as their latest releases
• Making Orbix Even Easier to Use
• Investing in configuration and management
  features that lower the operating expense in
  building and deploying Orbix systems

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IONA CORBA Standards Activity

• Three current areas of leadership in the OMG
• CORBA Reflection adding introspection
  capabilities to CORBA objects to allow querying
  for metadata at runtime, for the purpose of
  easing integration with other middleware
• CORBA Binding for WSDL RFP add a standard CORBA
  binding for WSDL to make CORBA objects directly
  accessible from a web services world
• WSDL C Mapping RFP support the development of
  web services applications in C, a language
  which remains in heavy use in enterprise
  middleware applications
• Led an effort in the W3C to make WS-Addressing
  endpoint references extensible to other protocols
  and middleware
• Largely customer driven
• Customers have explicitly asked us for standards
  in these areas

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Orbix 6.2 Broadest range of Platforms
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SOA Principles

• Or What You Already Know (but maybe didnt
  realize)

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What SOA is

• 30 year evolution towards
• Standards-based, distributed computing
• Component based development
• Started many years ago with principles of
  information hiding and structured programming
• Driven by the core economics
• Business imperative aroundsystem integration
• Reducing the cost and complexity of IT
  infrastructure
• IT Industry progression
• Loosely coupled interacting systems
• Defined using standard interfaces

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What SOA Isnt

• Summon Our Architecture SOA cannot conjure up
  easy fixes for a poorly-designed system
• State Of the Art SOA isnt something brand new,
  but todays service orientation focuses on
  messages exchanged
• Same on All, or Scrap Old Applications SOA does
  not imply or require homogeneous systems, and can
  help tackle enterprise heterogeneity
• Services on Appservers Services must focus on
  messages, not start from implementation and work
  backwards.
• SOAP-only Applications SOAP has improved service
  orientation and it has its place, but WSDL allows
  for multi-protocol service abstraction, thereby
  easing integration for legacy systems
• Stateless and Only Asynchronous stateless asynch
  services scale very well but stateful synch
  services are necessary for some cases
• Standards Of Age Service orientation standards
  are lacking, thanks mostly to the WS- rats nest
• Service-Oriented Architecture strictly speaking
  theres no architecture there, so at best its
  Service-Oriented Approach

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CORBA established SOA technology

• Separates interface specification from language
  operating system details
• First we define the interface
• Then we map that onto the implementation of
  choice
• Provides an enterprise-class infrastructure
• Strongly typed interfaces
• Synchronous asynchronous messaging
• Security
• Transaction management

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Our Current Dilemma

• If CORBA is SOA and SOA applications are good,
  then
• How do we deal with CORBA applications that have
  already been created?
• How do we build new CORBA applications that take
  advantage of recent and future innovations in
  middleware?
• How does CORBA SOA help us with our non-CORBA SOA
  systems?

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Building on CORBA Strengths

• One technology will never rule them all
• Web services standards provide good abstractions
  for information hiding
• WSDL lets us define interfaces that are also
  independent of message format and transport (in
  addition to language and O/S)
• WSDL enables us to adapt CORBA to the rest of the
  world
• And we can do so without having to rewrite either
  clients or servers

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Adapting CORBA to the rest of the world

• CORBA SOA use cases

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A Couple of Challenges

• So all you need are Web services... except
• Differences in application protocols
• Handling object references
• Granularity differences
• Programming practices i.e. factory patterns and
  callbacks
• Security
• Transactions
• Asynchronous vs Synchronous bridging
• Stateful versus stateless sessions
• Rewrite as little as possible
• Make CORBA servers accessible via other types of
  middleware
• Enable CORBA clients to use other types of
  middleware

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Three Approaches to CORBA SOA

• Pure CORBA Interfaces
• CORBA plus WSDL interfaces
• WSDL only

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Use Case 1 - Building from scratch using SOA and
CORBA
IONA and our customers pioneered the CORBA SOA
approach
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Use Case 1

• Advantages
• Mature technology, interfaces wont change
• Services are well defined
• Disadvantages
• Hard to adapt non-CORBA applications
• Hard to insulate from technology changes

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Use Case 2 Augmenting existing CORBA interfaces
An open consortium formed to develop open
standards for network providers, OEMs, and ISVs
to develop applications that operate across
multiple networking platform environments

• Fast telecom switches demand high performance
• Requires a host of security and management
  capabilities

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The Extensible Enterprise Service Bus

• Expose and standardize existing enterprise
  systems as web service end-points
• Open and pluggable, configuration-driven model
• Highly distributable run-time provides embedded
  performance
• Packaged plug-ins and easy to use tools -
  simplify development

MQSeries, TIBCO, JMS, Web Services
Mainframe
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Reusing CORBA Services
3
2
Artix Service Designer
CREATE
CREATE
CustomerSearch.WSDL
1
IMPORT
C Client
IDL (GetCustomer)
Web Service Clients
Tuxedo, CICS, IMS
IIOP
MQSeries, JMS
Artix Run-Time
Gen 3, O2K ASP, ORBacus
Tibco
OR VisiBroker
Java, J2EE
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Accessing CORBA Services

• We've proven implementation for bringing a
  Parlay Web services interface to market to major
  telcos and service providers for launch of new
  telco integrated enterprise applications.
• Web Services Watch, Graham Francis, Product
  Manager, Marconi

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Use Case 2

• Advantages
• Existing interfaces continue to work
• Open to broader range of non-CORBA applications
• Disadvantages
• Two sets of interfaces to maintain
• Addition infrastructure introduced

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Use case 3 Creating new interfaces
Multi-channel Capabilities Required to meet
Customer Needs and Competitive Pressures

• .NET to CORBA interop
• Non-invasive integration
• Stateful Web services
• High performance infrastructure
• Dynamic fail-over and load balancing

XWindowsClient
Mid-TierService
HOST
XWindowsClient
Mid-TierService
. . .
. . .
Mid-TierService
XWindowsClient
Client Tier
Middle Tier
Back-End
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Call Center Application SOA Implementation
SessionManager
Directory
Security
Distributed Services

• Major call center renovation project
• Tens of thousands of users
• Multiple legacy back end systems
• High security requirements
• .NET front end
• High performance environment

C
Mainframe
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Secure, Stateful .NET Client Integration
Artix Server Host
Artix Server Host
1
.NET Client
Artix Server Host
ArtixLocator
ltURLgt
2
ltRequest session IDgt
SessionManager
ltSession IDgt
4
IONASecurity Service
Business Logic
ltInvokegt
4
ltResultsgt
ltRequestTokengt
3
ltAuthenticategt
EnterpriseSecurityProvider
Microsoft ActiveDirectory
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Use Case 3

• Advantage
• Open CORBA applications up to web services and
  other applications
• Mediate a broad range of services
• Maintain high performance levels
• No changes required to CORBA servers
• Disadvantages
• Non-CORBA interfaces less mature
• Standards in development
• Additional infrastructure

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Making CORBA Servers Accessible
Before
After
CORBA Clients
CORBA Clients
CORBAServer
CORBAServer
Gen 3, O2K ASP, ORBacus
Gen 3, O2K ASP, ORBacus
TuxedoMQSeriesJMS, TIBCO
OR VisiBroker
OR VisiBroker
Leave CORBA servers as they are no changes,
existing CORBA clients access as usual. Introduce
a lightweight middleware broker that reconciles
CORBA other middleware.
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Bridge Diverse Middleware Islands
CORBA Clients
Clients

• Seamlessly integrate middleware islands
• Non-invasive
• High performance
• Improve business execution and performance

CORBAServer
Non-CORBASystem
X
Gen 3, O2K ASP, ORBacus
Tuxedo
OR VisiBroker
Integrate Lines of Business by connecting the
technology silos that support them.
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Summary SOA and CORBA

• SOA relates to how something is built, not to the
  technologies used to build it
• Pure CORBA SOA systems will continue to be built
  but can be hard to adapt to non-CORBA
  applications
• SOA does not require a conversion to Web services
  but Web services standards can be applied to
  make CORBA applications and non-CORBA
  applications interoperate more effectively.
• Artix uses WSDL to create true technology
  independent interfaces for CORBA and other types
  of middleware.

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For More Information

• Coming soon
• Building out CORBA Systems with Artix
• www.iona.com/whitepaper.htm

• Upcoming Webcasts
• ESBs Essential Infrastructure for Successful SOA
  
• April 5 and May 11
• Next Generation ESBs April 12 and May 18
• Successful SOA Using CORBA (this one) April 19
  and May 25
• www.iona.com/Webcasts

Or visit us on the Web at www.iona.com/artix
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More, more information

• See my Toward Integration columns and my weblog
  Middleware Mattershttp//www.iona.com/blogs/v
  inoski/http//www.iona.com/hyplan/vinoski/
• Give Artix a tryhttp//www.iona.com/devcenter/a
  rtix/

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Questions and Comments
March 2005