Implementation Techniques and an Object Group Service for CORBA-Based Applications in the Field of Parallel Processing

At present, several middleware architectures are known for the development of distributed or parallel software applications. While the field of distributed client-server applications is predominated by standards such as the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Remote Method Invocation (RMI) and the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), the domain of distributed parallel programming primarily makes use of tools such as the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) and the Message Passing Interface (MPI). In this paper, we examine the suitability of CORBA-based solutions for meeting application requirements in the field of distributed parallel programming. We outline concepts defined within CORBA which are helpful for the development of parallel applications, and we describe which programming techniques are at hand for this purpose. Subsequently, we present an Object Group Service which facilitates the development of CORBA-based, distributed and parallel software applications. Moreover, we introduce some basic ideas of how the Unified Modeling Language (UML) can be used for modeling parallel applications