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Sun Java™ System Application Server Platform Edition 8 Administration Guide

Chapter 12
The Object Request Broker

This chapter describes how to configure the Object Request Broker (ORB) and IIOP listeners. It has the following sections:

About the Object Request Broker

CORBA

The Sun Java™ System Application Server Platform Edition 8 supports a standard set of protocols and formats that ensure interoperability. Among these protocols are those defined by CORBA.

The CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) model is based on clients requesting services from distributed objects or servers through a well-defined interface by issuing requests to the objects in the form of remote method requests. A remote method request carries information about the operation that needs to be performed including the object name (called an object reference) of the service provider and parameters, if any, for the invoked method. CORBA automatically handles network programming tasks such as object registration, object location, object activation, request de-multiplexing, error-handling, marshalling, and operation dispatching.

What is the ORB?

The Object Request Broker (ORB) is the central component of CORBA. The ORB provides the required infrastructure to identify and locate objects, handle connection management, deliver data, and request communication.

A CORBA object never talks directly with another. Instead, the object makes requests through a remote stub to the ORB running on the local machine. The local ORB then passes the request to an ORB on the other machine using the Internet Inter-Orb Protocol (IIOP for short). The remote ORB then locates the appropriate object, processes the request, and returns the results.

IIOP can be used as a Remote Method Invocation (RMI) protocol by applications or objects using RMI-IIOP. Remote clients of enterprise beans (EJB modules) communicate with the Application Server via RMI-IIOP.

IIOP Listeners

An IIOP listener is a listen socket that accepts incoming connections from the remote clients of EJB components and from other CORBA-based clients. You can configure multiple IIOP listeners for the Application Server. For each listener, you specify a port number, a network address, and optionally, security attributes. For more information, see Creating an IIOP Listener.

Admin Console Tasks for the ORB

Configuring the ORB

  1. In the tree component select the ORB node.
  2. Select the thread pool the ORB uses in the Thread Pool ID combo box.

    3. The ORB uses thread pools to respond to requests from remote clients of EJB modules and other clients that communicate via RMI-IIOP. For more information, see the sections, Thread Pools in the Application Server and Creating Thread Pools.

  3. in the Max Message Fragment Size field, set the maximum fragment size for IIOP messages.

    4. Messages larger than this size will be fragmented.

  4. In the Total Connections field, set the maximum number of incoming connections for all IIOP all listeners.
  5. Restart the server.

Admin Console Tasks for IIOP Listeners

Creating an IIOP Listener

  1. In the tree component expand the ORB node.
  2. Select IIOP Listeners.
  3. Click New.
  4. Enter a name to identify the listener in the Name field.
  5. Enter the network address of the listener in the Network Address field.

    6. This can be an IP address or a DNS resolvable host name.

  6. Enter the port number the listener will listen on in the Listener Port field.
  7. Check the Enabled box in the Listener field to enable the listener.
  8. If you don’t want to make the listener secure, click OK.

In the Security section of this page, you can configure the listener to use SSL, TLS, or both SSL and TLS security.

To set up a secure listener, do the following:

  1. Check the Enabled box in the Security field.
  2. If you want clients to authenticate themselves to the server when using this listener, check the Enabled box in the Client Authentication field.
  3. Enter the name of an existing server keypair and certificate in the Certificate NickName field.
  4. In the SSL3/TLS section:
    1. Check the security protocol(s) you want to enable on the listener. You must check either SSL3 or TLS, and can enable both protocols.
    2. Check the cipher suite used by the protocol(s). To enable all cipher suites, check All Supported Cipher Suites. You may also enable individual cipher suites.
  5. Click OK.

The listener will now be listed in the Current Listeners table on the IIOP Listeners page.

Editing an IIOP Listener

  1. In the tree component expand the ORB node.
  2. Select the IIOP Listeners node.
  3. Select the listener you want to modify in the Current Listeners table.
  4. Modify the listener’s settings. See Creating an IIOP Listener for descriptions of the fields you can modify.

Deleting an IIOPListener

  1. In the tree component expand the ORB node.
  2. Select the IIOP Listeners node.
  3. Check the listener(s) you want to delete in the Current Listeners table.
  4. Click Delete.



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