presents CORVAL on the Web

CORBA Validation, (CORVAL) Project 22016

Objectives and Approach

Background:

Object Orientation is the next software development paradigm that will sweep through the world of Information Technology. Essential to the successful deployment of Object Technology is the ability for client programs to be able to request services from objects by binding to a consistent, well defined interface without regard to the physical location of the server object that will carry out the requested service.

The Common Object Request Broker Architecture specification (CORBA) published by the Object Management Group, and forming part of X/Open’s set of Open Systems specifications known as the Common Application Environment (CAE), describes a software "bus" that provides this connection between clients and server objects in a distributed environment.

The products that perform this function are called Object Request Brokers (ORBs), but there are no tools available to help ORB developers, system integrators and users ensure that competitive implementations of the ORB implementations are interoperable and provide the needed consistency of services to client applications and server objects.

Objectives:

The objective of the CORVAL project is to facilitate and encourage multi-vendor deployment of Object Request Brokers (ORBs) by developing and bringing to market:

a programme to promote and differentiate conforming and interoperable ORBs, that is distinctive, clear and valuable to buyers; and
product quality test tools to help developers build conformance and interoperability into their ORBs.

Approach:

The approach is to:

Specify, develop and review a set of product quality test tools for validating ORB implementations for conformance and interoperability against the CORBA 2 specification.
Build on the ADL automated test generation research already conducted by The Open Group, the Information technology Promotion Agency (Japan) and Sun Microsystems Labs (USA), and transfer skills in this technology into Europe.
Define and validate the benefits and features users require of an ORB "marking" or "branding" programme, and develop and launch a continuing programme that best exploits the existing equity of the X/Open brand.

Exploitation of results:

Technical exploitation will be through licensing of the test tools, sale of support and maintenance services and the use of the tools by ORB developers in development and QA.

Marketing exploitation will be through use of the results of the project, particularly the "marking" or "branding" scheme, in the marketing and promotion of the partners’ Object Request Brokers, and the promotion of this scheme to users and other ORB vendors.

Project status

The test suite has reached 'General Availability' status and is therefore on sale to other users. Work continues on the design and planning for the launch of the Brand.

Project reference and partners

This is a project under the European Commission ESPRIT Framework IV RTD in Information Technologies Programme 1994-1998.

Domain: Software Technologies

Sub-domain: Distributed Systems and database Technology

Project number: 22016

The partners in this project are :-

Test tools for the Project are being developed by Aptest Ireland, Ltd

Delivery schedule

DELIVERABLES	DUE DATE	DELIVERED
Test Suite and Project Specifications	31 Mar 97	31 Mar 97
Snapshot Release	23 Jun 97	18 Jul 97
Beta Release	13 Oct 97	10 Oct 97
GA Release	1 Dec 97	2 Dec 97

More details

For more detailed information, the following publically available material exists - this will be updated as the project progresses :-

A datasheet (5 pages)

A slide show of the test suite development.

A summary of the Technical Annex to the contract

A second draft of the Test Suite Specification, available as compressed Postscript or PDF.

A list of planned CORVAL Project Deliverables

(The Acrobat Viewer is required to read PDF files)

Contact point

For more information, please mail to XoCORVAL@opengroup.org

Project enhancement

The Open Group is developing the product to add interoperability testing features, outside the scope of this project. Further details of these features and other aspects of the development of this VSOrb test suite are also available.

In addition to this public section there is a private project area

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