07-09-2014, 10:20 PM
The original version of the CORBA standard was defined in 1991. This first version of the specification was deliberately limited in scope. The OMG’s philosophy was to define a small standard, let implementors gain experience and then slowly expand the standard to incorporate more and more capabilities. This “slow but sure” approach has been remarkably successful. In particular, there have been few backwards-incompatible changes to the CORBA specification. Instead, new versions of the specification have tended to add new functionality rather than modify existing functionality. Today, CORBA is extremely feature-rich, supporting numerous programming languages, operating systems, and a diverse range of capabilities—such as transactions, security. Naming and Trading services, messaging and publish-subscribe services—that are essential for many enterprise-level applications. Many newer middleware technologies claim to be superior to CORBA but actually have to do a lot of “catching up” just to match some of the capabilities that CORBA has had for a long time.