A case for meta-interworking: projecting CORBA meta-data into COM

The pressure to reduce the time and effort required to produce and update software components, together with the existence of multiple competing component worlds, has forced the introduction of interworking standards. Unfortunately the interworking standards fail to suitably address the need for access to meta information. In the light of meta-data being increasingly important for component environments, this inaccessibility of meta-data can lead to components being unusable by their intended clients. What exasperates the situation is that if access to meta-data repositories is provided using an implementation of the interworking standard, the information retrieved is incorrect. The paper describes these difficulties. To exemplify the solution, the construction of an adapter is described. This adapter provides access to the Common Object Request Broker Architectures' (CORBA) Interface Repository via the Interfaces of the Component Object Model's (COM) Type Library. This solution provides access to meta-data which is essential if the full benefit of interworking is to be realised.