| NOTE: | These release notes are current as of TAO 1.2a (which corresponds to OCI part number TBD). The latest version of these release notes can be viewed or downloaded from OCI's web site at http://www.theaceorb.com/releasenotes. |
|---|
Table of Contents
TAO 1.2a derives from the DOC TAO 1.2.1 beta kit with bugfix-related patches selectively applied to enhance stability. A record of applied patches can be found in OCIChangeLog files installed with the distribution. At the time of this release, the current DOC beta kit was TAO 1.2.2.
With the exception of Windows operating systems, building ACE and TAO from source code requires GNU Make. While you can use other tools to build applications using ACE & TAO, using GNU Make lets you leverage the existing build system distributed with ACE & TAO. If you need GNU Make, you can get a source distribution through http://www.theaceorb.com/gnumake as well as other places.
TAO 1.2a complies with most features of the CORBA 2.5 specification, including the following specific features:
TAO 1.2a includes support for the OMG RT CORBA specification. RT CORBA, an optional part of the CORBA 2.5 specification, is designed to give developers a high degree of control over the allocation and management of run-time resources to improve quality of service (QoS) and end-to-end predictability in time-critical applications.
TAO 1.2a adds complete support for CORBA-compliant Portable Interceptors. Portable Interceptors in CORBA are objects that the ORB invokes at predefined points in the request and reply paths of an operation invocation or during the generation of an interoperable object reference (IOR). Developers can define their own code to be executed at each interception point to perform application-specific tasks such as logging, debugging, or security and authentication.
TAO 1.2a includes full support for bi-directional GIOP/IIOP. Bi-directional GIOP provides a solution to the problem of invoking methods on clients behind a firewall.
TAO 1.2a includes full support for CORBA-compliant Dynamic Anys. Previously (in TAO 1.1a), Dynamic Anys were based on the earlier CORBA 2.2 specification.
TAO 1.2a adds support for local interfaces from CORBA 3 and includes local implementations of several standard interfaces, such as the Portable Object Adapter (POA) and servant managers. Local interfaces obviate the need to define special pseudo-objects and pseudo IDL (PIDL) for objects that are never called remotely, such as the POA and ORB interfaces.
TAO 1.2a adds support for the OMG CORBA Security Level 1 specification. OMG's Security Service specification is a comprehensive treatment of security as it relates to distributed object systems and applications.
TAO 1.2a introduces many IDL compiler enhancements and bug fixes, including support for re-opened modules and forward declaration of an interface that is defined in a separate IDL file.
TAO 1.2a adds a virtual real-time emulator to enable real-time performance analysis on non-real-time platforms.
In TAO 1.2a, support has been extended to new platforms, operating systems, and C++ compilers, including several 64-bit and real-time operating systems. Supported operating systems include Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, IRIX, VxWorks, LynxOS, ChorusOS, ReliantUNIX, UnixWare, and OS/9. TAO 1.2a also introduces changes to configuration options to allow developers and administrators complete control over their application's run-time environment.
In TAO 1.2a, the core TAO library has been divided into many smaller libraries so applications only need to link in the features they need. In addition, TAO 1.2a includes an application development tool that you can use to build minimal libraries containing only those features that your application actually uses.
TAO 1.2a comes with an improved open pluggable protocols framework so developers can create their own transports that seamlessly integrate with the rest of the TAO ORB. Custom protocols can be developed to improve performance, reduce bandwidth consumption, enforce security, or allow the ORB to operate over proprietary transport protocols. Applications need not be aware of the existence of these custom protocols.
In addition to OMG-standard IIOP, TAO 1.2a includes implementations of the following pluggable protocols: UIOP (uses UNIX-domain sockets), SHMIOP (shared memory transport), DIOP (UDP-based transport), and SSLIOP (uses the OpenSSL implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer).
TAO 1.2a provides complete support for the OMG Interoperable
Naming Service specification, including
corbaloc and corbaname object URLs
and support for the CosNaming::NamingContextExt
interface.
TAO 1.2a includes many enhancements to TAO's implementation
of the OMG Notification Service, including multithreaded
event dispatching and filter evaluation, full ETCL filtering
constraint grammar, support for the
SequencePushConsumer interface, and support for
most of the standard quality of service (QoS) properties.
TAO 1.2a provides developers and administrators with better
control over multicast discovery of TAO's CORBA services
(such as the Naming and Object Trader services) and the
addition of a new mcast: object URL scheme.
TAO 1.2a adds an implementation of the OMG Interface Repository specification for dynamic discovery of IDL types and interfaces.
TAO 1.2a includes several improvements and bug fixes to the Implementation Repository.
Details on these, and many other features of TAO 1.2a, will be detailed in the forthcoming OCI's TAO Developer's Guide, Version 1.2a, available separately.
-j for GNU Make can cause
strange build errors when building code generated by
the IDL compiler if dependencies are not correctly
specified in the Makefile.
OCI provides commercial support for TAO 1.2a. Contact sales for more information.