IDL2C++11 and AMI4CCM recommended for adoption

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.

The first specification was the CORBA v3.3 revision. The RTF integrated the ZIOP specification into the core CORBA specification. We added two new sections to the CORBA specification, first compression which defines an API for (un)compressing data and secondly ZIOP which enables the ORB to compress the data on the wire. Before the OMG AB meeting we got some comments which we addressed and the specification went through smoothly. Hopefully in the near future other CORBA vendors are willing to charter another CORBA RTF that can address the list of reported issues.

As second specification we presented AMI4CCM which adds the capability to perform asynchronous invocations from a CCM user component. Some small questions to answer and nothing really that would delay this specification. We are very pleased with the fact that the OMG has recommended our AMI4CCM revised submission for adoption. At the PTC meeting we have chartered a FTF that will finish the specification and deliver a V1.0 at the upcoming OMG September 2012 meeting.

As last, but most important specification we presented our IDL to C++11 Language Mapping. This new mapping greatly simplifies the life of CORBA, DDS, and CCM users. It is an effort on which we are working already for years with a lot of energy and passion. The last 6 months we have been able to make a revised submission and also implement it into a new product called TAOX11. Now it was time to see how the other OMG members did react to our proposal.

The feedback from the MARS working group was positive. We had enough time to present it and discussed a few topics. The conclusion from MARS was that the specification was fit enough to go the the AB.

The feedback from the AB was also positive, after a decade of talks now there was someone proposing a new C++11 language mapping without breaking the existing one. Also this specification got recommended for adoption and the FTF has been chartered to run until the September 2012 meeting. Our focus will be on developing a full product suite for CORBA, DDS, CCM, and D&C supporting this language mapping.

After the meeting I visited one of our customers that supported all the specification work. They where very pleased with the work done and we discussed some future steps. We decided that at the September 2012 meeting we want to present a draft RFP for the "Deployment and Configuration V5" and for the "CORBA Component Model V5" specifications.

Now it is back to regular work, interesting new challenges in the area of CCM and DDS4CCM, but also we have to implement our C++11 language mapping for CCM, D&C, and DDS!