johnny's blog

Two weeks ago I attended the OMG March 2013 meeting in Reston VA. During this technical meeting we had a lot of interesting features and topics to talk about.

First we announced our new TAOX11 v1.1 release, a new version of our CORBA product implementing the new IDL to C++11 language mapping. This new version is compliant with the V1.0 version of the language mapping and we have a lot of new features in this new release.

The last years we have worked on CIAO and DAnCE as CCM and D&C implementations. As major additions we have implemented DDS4CCM and AMI4CCM. As part of the F6 project we have worked on a new CCM implementation that has much less dependencies on CORBA as CIAO has. Also new features have been added through the Generic Interaction Support (GIS).

Last week I attended the Dutch BCES conference. This is the only Dutch IT conference focussed on the embedded and realtime domains. Same as last year we had a booth at the exhibition but this time our location was much better. At the booth we had material regarding our CORBA, DDS, CCM, and D&C based products and services.

When I started as a user of ACE/TAO more than a decade ago there wasn't really a quality process in place. New beta versions where released (in-)frequently, sometimes even without detailed compilation checks on major platforms. There where even days where we had multiple releases a day.

Last week I visited the OMG TC in Jacksonville Florida. Besides being sponsor/exhibitor at the event we had 3 specifications up for the OMG Architecture Board (AB). AMI4CCM and IDL2C++11 where delivering their FTF reports and RCLM its RTF report.

The last weeks we had 3 OMG specifications that we had to finish for the upcoming OMG September meeting. Besides the revision task for RCLM we had two FTFs to finish.

The AMI4CCM FTF was the easiest one. No formal issues where reported on it and it was just a matter of creating the required documents and provide them to the OMG.

It has been a very busy month for us. Starting up several new projects but also finishing the first version of TAOX11. Yesterday we have shipped the first version of TAOX11 to one of our customers. With TAOX11 they can implement CORBA clients and servers using the new IDL to C++11 language mapping. The new language mapping is very user friendly and safe. Our customer can increase their productivity heavily by switching to C++11.

It was a very long and busy trip to the OMG March 2012 meeting in Reston, VA. After returning home it took me some time to catch up all emails and urgent issues before I was able to sit down and update this blog.

The trip was focused on 3 separate OMG specifications. All took a significant time to prepare and we where anxious to present them during the OMG meeting in person.

After several months of hard work we are almost ready with our IDL to C++11 Language mapping. The full team has worked on a reference implementation in parallel. Everything we wanted to achieve has been accomplished, in fact, it even got better!

The new mapping will be much easier and safer to use. A lot of errors are now just impossible to make, the compiler will reject the application code. Also the new C++11 move semantics will lead to a more performant implementation than with plain C++!

Some time ago I was invited by the NATO TTCP working group to talk about some of the work we have been doing the last years. We prepared a presentation which I delivered to the NATO TTCP working group in London on October 24th.

The feedback on our ideas was positive. There was more intested in DDS4CCM and the days where really busy. The next weeks I am going to catch up with the other attendants to see how we can leverage efforts.