Developing practical, object-oriented middleware interfaces for data-intensive applications

Data-intensive applications require frequent interaction with shared data sources. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), an object-oriented middleware standard, provides facilities for the development of distributed interface objects. However, until recently, CORBA has had no provision for the definition of true data objects that can be transported to a client application, which has implications for application performance. This paper presents the issues surrounding the development of object-oriented CORBA interfaces for data-intensive applications. Also, two abstractions, aggregation and iteration, are presented for developing interface objects that can accommodate data-intensive applications using existing CORBA capabilities.