[Up: Java Interface]
[Previous: Conceptual Graphs] [Next: Anatomy of an operation]

#
Dynamic Invocation Interface

In this section we present a description for CORBAs DII. For the following discussions we refer to the interface `Account` as specified in section 3.3.2. A client application written in C++ might for example use this interface in the following way:

      Account_ptr acc = ...;  // Obtain a reference to an Account-object

      acc->deposit( 100 );
      acc->withdraw( 20 );

      cout << "Total balance is " << acc->balance() << endl;

If we assume that the current balance of the server object was when the variable `acc` was bound with a refence to this object, then this program fragment prints out ``Total balance is 80''. It should be clear that this program fragment requires the definition of the class `Account_ptr`. This class, which allows a type safe access to a CORBA object implementing the interface `Account`, is generated using an IDL compiler. Thus the type of the operational interface of the server object is known at compile time. But what if we did not know about the interface `Account` at compile-time? The only possible way to access the object in this case is to use CORBA's dynamic invocation interface (DII). This interface to an ORB offers the possibility to invoke operation calls whose signature was not known at compile time. The following code excerpt shows the usage of the DII:

        CORBA::Object_ptr obj = ...;
        CORBA::Request_ptr req = obj->_request( "deposit" );
        req->add_in_arg( "amount" ) <<= (CORBA::ULong) 100;
        req->invoke();

Note that the variable `obj` is of type `Object_ptr` and not `Account_ptr`. The code fragment demonstrates how to model the operation call `acc->deposit( 100 )` from the code fragment above. It does not require the `Account_ptr` client stub as in the last example. Despite the generic manner how the operation is invoked, the problem remains how to write a generic user interface to access CORBAs DII. Such an interface would allow a user to invoke arbitrary operations of a priori unknown interfaces. The next section gives a brief overview of the specific details of an operation invocation.

[Previous: Conceptual Graphs] [Next: Anatomy of an operation]
[Up: Java Interface]