B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

Middleware Technologies 233
Distributed objects must work within a common framework, using a
commonly distributed protocol. There are currently three competing
distributed architectures in use today:
• OMA's CORBA — Object Management Architecture, Common Object
Request Broker Architecture (Object Management Group — OMG);
• Windows DNA's COMH Component Object Model (Microsoft);
and
• J2EE's EJB — Java 2 Enterprise Edition, Enterprise JavaBeans (Sun
Microsystems).
Each protocol defines specifications for object interoperability,
interfacing, communication and distribution. These protocols will be
discussed in detail in the next section.
Though the concept of distributed objects has been around for
decades, they are a relatively new and immature EAI middleware
solution and need much work to meet unfulfilled expectations.
The good news is that distributed architectures are beginning to
fulfill their potential at a much faster rate than they have in the past by
building on past failures and experiences. Distributed object middleware
solutions are moving away from the academic or idealistic approaches
that object-oriented design methodologies originally espoused to a more
practical, component approach that can handle the real-life rigorous
demands of an enterprise.
8.4.1. Distributed components
The true benefits of distributed object technology are components.
Object-oriented programming has long been considered the nirvana of
application development. However, it has never fulfilled its potential
due to a lack of standards which allow objects to communicate with
one another across processes, machines and networks. Consequently,
object-oriented programming has tended to be contained to just an
application with no efficient means of inter-application communication.
The solution to this problem is a system in which application
developers create reusable software components. Components are autonomous,
self-managing and packaged objects that can be placed anywhere
on the network, implement a common set of business services and