Blogs | Photon Infotech

There are very few things that haven't changed in the field of software development. One such thing is the pain of development when using Object Request Brokers (ORB).

Some eight years ago, I got into a project that heavily used DCOM. When I entered the project, the original architects of the system had left the scene leaving it to the developers to address the issues out of some architectural mistakes. To be fair to the architects, I can't think of a better solution considering the technology available in those days.

The configurations were tricky and can't be setup on any Windows machine just like that. The configuration was full of quirks to work around the dependency on a domain controller. So, we always used a disk image taken out of a QA system for every production deployment.

Considering availability of Visual Studio, debugging wasn't a very big problem. However, debugging from the UI to the backend component was impossible. The first run would be go through the UI layer step by step, identify the function call made to the backend component that could be the source of the problem. Then load the project that corresponds to the backend component, set breakpoints at the function, the front end UI and begin debugging when the control stops at the breakpoint.

Now I'm heading a team that develops an application that uses ICE as the ORB. The scene hasn't changed much. Here too, the architects of the system have left the scene. The first set of developers who worked on the project are not there anymore. The problems I faced eight years ago are still present for my team to work with.

ICE has relatively simpler configuration for security when compared with DCOM. However, the IT team had posed some for the offshore team. The offshore team was expected to connect to the ICE grid through a proxy. It took us a few weeks to get to a reliable connectivity to the ICE grid. Even after over a year of development, every deployment has its share of configuration issues.

The software is constructed as a set of services communicating with ICE the ORB. The problem of debugging through the services just reminds me of my good old days with Visual Studio debugger. The situation is just worse. In my earlier experience, the applications were relatively light and didn't take long to start up. Now, with app servers like tomcat hosting the application, the restart times are much higher. Sometimes, the developers will have to restart the ICE services too when they become unresponsive.

ORB definitely addresses the architectural requirements in complex projects. But when it comes to using them in a software development project, we need to watch out issues like the ones mentioned above that can slow down the development process.

ORB DEPENDANT SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

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