13.1.12 Mapping of Pseudo-objects to C++

CORBA pseudo-objects may be implemented either as normal CORBA objects or as serverless objects. In the CORBA specification, the fundamental differences between these strategies are:

• Serverless object types do not inherit from CORBA::Object.
• Individual serverless objects are not registered with any ORB.
• Serverless objects do not necessarily follow the same memory management rules as for regular IDL types.

References to serverless objects are not necessarily valid across computational contexts; for example, address spaces. Instead, references to serverless objects that are passed as parameters may result in the construction of independent, functionally identical copies of objects used by receivers of these references. To support this, the otherwise hidden representational properties (such as data layout) of serverless objects are made known to the ORB. Specifications for achieving this are not contained in this chapter; making serverless objects known to the ORB is an implementation detail.

This chapter provides a standard mapping algorithm for all pseudo-object types. This avoids the need for piecemeal mappings for each of the nine CORBA pseudo-object types, and accommodates any pseudo-object types that may be proposed in future revisions of CORBA. It also avoids representation dependence in the C mapping, while still allowing implementations that rely on C-compatible representations.