The Open Brand for CORBA

Program Data Sheet

In their early life many, most technologies struggle to engender enough confidence in the market that sales take off. This problem is particularly acute where products depend on "plug and play" interoperability to work. Once confidence in the buyer is achieved, the market expands and does so more quickly. The Open Brand and allied procurement programs are all designed to build this buyer confidence.

Those ORB vendors who register their products have the benefit of displaying the trademark that signifies their guarantee of conformance. Consumers of object technology can use the CORBA brand as a powerful procurement device.

The Open Brand program with 25 suppliers registering over 1,500 branded products. IT consumers have mandated over $25+ Billion worth of branded products and specification in mandated procurements.

OMG has selected The Open Group as its partner to implement a CORBA brand program.

The Open Group's portfolio of open systems test suites includes: UNIX, CDE, Network Computer, NFS, XTI/Sockets, X11 and Motif. The Open Group's test tools are essential for proper development and maintenance of standards-based products, ensuring conformance of products to industry-standard APIs, application portability and interoperability. In-depth testing reduces costs by identifying defects at the earliest possible point in the development cycle.

The Open Brand for CORBA

The Open Brand program is the means by which a vendor guarantees that their product complies with certain requirements, defined by the Product Standard, to the buyer. In this case the conformance requirements are for a product to implement the OMG's CORBA 2.1 specifications.

The Open Brand program is built around the right to use certain trademarks, with trademark law as its legal basis. Once a product complies with the CORBA specification, and the vendor has entered into a trademark license thereby guaranteeing that conformance, the vendor is entitled to use the trademarks in relation to that product.

An important complement to the Open Brand program, premiered with CORBA, is an Interoperability Assurance Program that extends to brand guarantee to cover resolution of interoperability problems customers may encounter. This gives buyers of registered products recourse to address interoperability problems between multiple products. The Open Group provides a process and resources for conciliation and, if necessary, mediation.

As an Open Brand for CORBA customer, you would be entitled to participate as a member of the Open Brand for CORBA Developemtn BOARD. This group steers the evolution of the product standards related to CORBA and the strategic direction of this Brand Program.

Regular meetings of the group discuss the issues of including new functionality development in the Brand Program, focusing on its suitability and stability in relation to the implementations and their availability for this new technology.

Issues related to the Open Brand for CORBA Program policies and procedures are also discussed in this forum. A member of staff from The Open Group and a member of staff from the Object Management Group participate on the Board and facilitate the liaison between all the parties.

Test Suites

Objective

In the CORBA model an application program operates in a distributed environment, composed of client programs and server objects cooperating through the medium of an Object Request Broker (ORB). The VSOrb and VSJOrb suites test products that provide this ORB functionality for conformance with the CORBA specification. VSOrb tests ORBs with C and/or C++ language mappings and VSJOrb tests products with Java language mappings.

The test suites verify the functionality offered by an ORB to both clients and objects in order to facilitate three important areas of CORBA application portability:

• An ORB allows CORBA-conforming clients to be built and executed
• An ORB allows CORBA-conforming objects to be built and, when accessed by a client, executed
• An ORB will interoperate with other conforming ORBs, allowing clients to transparently access objects in a multi-vendor, multi-ORB environment

All ORBs offer CORBA defined capabilities. However, variations in the implementation of interfaces and services means that applications still need to be ported in order to use the functionality on different ORBs. The test suites VSOrb (for C and C++) and VSJOrb (for Java) ensure correct and consistent interfaces and functionality for CORBA-conformant ORBs. Thus, applications can use the features and services of CORBA without change across all CORBA-conforming products.

The test suites focus on defined APIs and services rather than product implementation. Thus ORB developers retain the flexibility to optimize and differentiate their ORBs for performance, operating environment, marketplace, etc., while at the same time providing a standard interface for applications.

Intended Use

VSOrb and VSJOrb are designed for two primary uses:

Scope

VSOrb and VSJOrb test the following CORBA functional areas, divided into five basic groups:

• language mapping for CORBA APIs is correct
• IDL to compiler accepts IDL syntax and performs correct translations
• requests can be made through translated code
• CORBA APIs operate as specified from the appropriate language, including that requests can be made using the DII and DSI interfaces
• IIOP messages are accepted and generated with correct syntax, semantics and exception handling

CORBA Coverage

VSOrb and VSJOrb verify the functionality of version 2.1 of the CORBA specification and covers the following CORBA requirements:

• Interoperability Version 1.0
• IDL Syntax and semantics
• Dynamic Invocation Interface (DII) APIs
• Dynamic Skeleton Interface (DSI) APIs
• Interface Repository APIs
• ORB APIs
• Compiler testing for C, C++, Java (as appropriate)
• C, C++, Java (as appropriate) Language Mapping

Other areas of CORBA currently outside the scope of either test suite are:

• Interoperability (DCE ESIOP)
• Interworking (CORBA/COM)
• IIOP Version 1.1 fragmentation
• extended data types
• applet-only environments (for Java implementations)

Operational Interface

VSOrb

VSOrb is implemented under the TETware test harness, the multi-platform version of the Test Environment Toolkit, a widely used framework for implementing test suites. TETware provides a common environment for test users and developers and allows tests from different sources to be easily integrated together.

TETware is implemented on both UNIX and Windows NT systems, facilitating the use of VSOrb in both these environments.

VSJORB

VSJOrb is implemented under the JETPack test harness, a Java version of the Test Environment Toolkit (TET), a widely used framework for test suites control, management and reporting. JETPack provides a common environment for test users and developers and allows tests from different sources to be easily integrated and managed.

JETPack is implemented on both UNIX and Windows NT systems, facilitating the use of VSJOrb in both these environments.

Host Environment

VSOrb is designed to operate on POSIX conformant systems and on Windows NT^®. An ISO C compilation system (header files, compiler and libraries of support functions) is required, and a C++ compilation must also be supplied if the C++ language binding is to be tested.

VSJOrb is designed to operate on POSIX conformant systems and on Windows NT. A Java compiler and a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) must be provided. A C++ compiler must also be supplied in order to build certain components of the test suite

For either test suite, a Windows NT system must also provide the MKS Toolkit.

Network Environment

VSOrb and VSJOrb testing is initially performed using a single ORB and a single host system. Interoperability testing includes ORBs on multiple systems across a TCP/IP network.

Interoperability

VSOrb and VSJOrb can be used to test ORB interoperability in two ways:

• Passively -- the test suite contains a proxy server that passively monitors IOP messages for correct generation and response
• Actively - the test suite proxy can manipulate IOP messages to cause exceptions and determine if those exceptions are correct.

Value to Developers

A number of test suite features are of particular use in troubleshooting conformance problems during development and in regression testing:

• The ability to invoke tests individually
• The ability to select verbose journal file messages documenting test methods
• Detailed journal file messages documenting the expected and observed behavior for test failures
• Configurable for implementation-specific behavior
• Resilience in the face of implementation problems
• Fully automated execution

The User’s Guide contains information on troubleshooting common conformance issues and the Programmer’s Guide contains information on the structure and implementation of the test suite to assist programmer’s needing to extend or enhance the test suite - for example to test implementation specific features.

Fees

Brand Fees

Open Brand program for CORBA are based on annual revenues:

• $15,000 per annum - For Organizations less than $25M
• $20,000 per annum - For Organizations greater than $25M but less than $100M
• $30,000 per annum - For Organizations greater than $100M

Execution of the Open Brand Trademark License Agreement (TMLA) is prerequisite.

Execution of The Open Group Test Suite Source Code License Agreement is prerequisite.

The Next Step

For additional information about the Open Brand for CORBA Program and details on how to get involved, please contact our sales team.