ORBit

CORBA (the Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a standard for "distributed objects". This basically means that applications may make invoke operations on objects that are not located in the same address space. Frequently object client and server are in different processes or even on different computer systems. If you are familiar with how RPC (Remote Procedure Call) works, then thinking of CORBA as an object-oriented RPC specification may be helpful.

To make use of CORBA technology, applications must go through an ORB (Object Request Broker) library that implements the CORBA API. The ORB hides all the low level communications that are necessary for sending requests to objects, receiving replies from them, and making object implementations accessable. To the application, invoking an operation on a distributed object acts the same as a local function call.

When GNOME first started to make use of CORBA, it made use of the MICO ORB. Mico did not fit GNOME's needs very well, though, so Elliot Lee and Dick Porter decided to write a new ORB from scratch. Thus ORBit was born.

Today, ORBit is the CORBA implementation used by many of the GNOME components. It is fast and lean, allowing the use of CORBA in areas that would not normally seem practical. It supports much of the CORBA 2.2 standard, and has hooks that allow easy integration with GNOME programs. For more information on ORBit, visit the ORBit web page.