Orbix Interview Preparation Guide

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To get all the Orbix configuration for a domain, run the following command:
itadmin config dump
This will work in both CFR and file based domains.

The output will look something like:
★ plugins:it_arm_interceptors:shlib_name = "it_arm_interceptors"
★ plugins:itrp:shlib_name = "it_itrp"
★ plugins:itrp:live_time = "2"
★ plugins:it_mbean_monitoring:shlib_name = "it_mbean_monitoring"
★ plugins:it_mbean_monitoring:ClassName = "com.iona.management.logging.mbean_monitoring.MBeanMonitoringPlugIn"
★ plugins:basic_codeset:shlib_name = "it_basic_codeset"
★ plugins:basic_codeset:ClassName = "com.iona.corba.codeset.BasicCodeSetPlugIn"
★ plugins:iiop_tls:ClassName = "com.iona.corba.iiop.tls.IIOPTLSPlugIn"
★ plugins:iiop_tls:shlib_name = "it_iiop_tls"

Orbix 5 and Orbix 6 is designed to write multi-threaded (and single threaded) application from the ground up. However, the following describes in more details about Orbix thread safety:
All Orbix library public APIs are thread safe.
Per CORBA specification, add_ref/remove_ref operations in the idl generated code is thread safe.

Regarding the rest of the generated code, Orbix IDL -> C++ code generator generates mappings for user-defined IDL types, as well as client-side proxy invocation code (-base switch) and server-side servant dispatch code (-poa switch). The client-side invocation code and server-side dispatch code are thread-safe. The mappings generated for user-defined IDL types are not thread safe for concurrent modification but are thread-safe for concurrent reads.

Yes, the port of the Orbix Notification service can be changed easily during the Orbix domain deployment process. Running itconfigure in expert mode allows you to change the IIOP port of the Orbix Notification Service. For further information please see the chapter "Creating a Domain in Expert Mode" in the Orbix Deployment Guide and the chapter "Managing the Notification Service" in the Enterprise Messaging Guide.

OAccessing the local address on the client-side, e.g. in an interceptor can be achieved by using the following code:

CORBA::Object_var obj = orb->resolve_initial_references("IT_IPTransport");
if (CORBA::is_nil(obj))
{
self_addr = (const char*) 0;
return;
}
IT_ATLI2_IP::IPTransport_ptr ip_transport = IT_ATLI2_IP::IPTransport::_narrow(obj);

if (CORBA::is_nil(ip_transport))
{
self_addr = (const char*) 0;
return;
}

CORBA::String_var hostname = ip_transport->local_node_name();
IT_ATLI2_IP::IPAddressSeq_var ip_addresses =
ip_transport->name_to_addresses(
hostname,
0,
IT_ATLI2_IP::PROTOCOL_TCP,
IT_UtcT::never()
);
IT_ATLI2_IP::IPAddress_var ip_address = ip_addresses[0];
self_addr = ip_address->node_literal();

As SUN's ORB runtime cannot be used with Orbix applications, configure the JDK to use the Orbix ORB runtime instead by setting system properties org.omg.CORBA.ORBClass and org.omg.CORBA.ORBSingletonClass to the appropriate values.

As SUN's ORB runtime cannot be used with Orbix applications, configure the JDK to use the Orbix ORB runtime instead by setting system properties org.omg.CORBA.ORBClass and org.omg.CORBA.ORBSingletonClass to the appropriate values.

The ORB properties can be set in one of the following ways:
★ Using the iona.properties file
★ Using Java interpreter arguments

Clients can locate CORBA objects through the OrbixNames, which is Orbix's implementation of the CORBA Naming Service.
"OrbixNames allows you to set up groups of objects that can provide particular services to a client. When a client requests an object from a group, OrbixNames selects an object using a random or a round-robin load-balancing algorithm. You choose the algorithm associated with each group".

Clients can locate CORBA objects through the OrbixNames, which is Orbix's implementation of the CORBA Naming Service.
"OrbixNames allows you to set up groups of objects that can provide particular services to a client. When a client requests an object from a group, OrbixNames selects an object using a random or a round-robin load-balancing algorithm. You choose the algorithm associated with each group".

Clients can locate CORBA objects through the OrbixNames, which is Orbix's implementation of the CORBA Naming Service.
"OrbixNames allows you to set up groups of objects that can provide particular services to a client. When a client requests an object from a group, OrbixNames selects an object using a random or a round-robin load-balancing algorithm. You choose the algorithm associated with each group".

Orbix 6.3 has not been tested to run with Java Applets and is unsupported.

Orbix 3 and later versions of Orbix (such as Orbix 6) have "on the wire" compatibility. Orbix 3 uses IIOP (Internet Inter-Orb Protocol) as it's default protocol. Hence an Orbix 3 client can speak to an Orbix 6 server and vice-versa.

By default IORs will contain the hostname of a machine. Using such an IOR will succeed without any problems since a hostname lookup will return the new IP address.
Ensure IORs of the CFR, Locator, etc. contain hostnames rather then IP addresses. Use the iordump tool shipped with Orbix in order to inspect the hostname/port contained in the IOR.

These settings apply to each Orbix process for which these settings have been configured and not to the sum of Orbix processes running in an Orbix domain.
If these settings have been configured in the global configuration scope then these settings will apply to each process started in your Orbix domain.

It is not possible to capture SSL handshaking errors programatically in Orbix as this is handled by the SSL toolkit and will fail before the connection is established and Orbix begins to pass the request through the interceptors in the binding list.

Currently Orbix 3 (release 3.3.10) is not supported on any virtualization platforms.

Orbix 6.3.6 is the first Service Pack of Orbix to include support for Java 7. Support for Java 7 is provided for Orbix 3.3.12 in Q2 2013.

Because Orbix 6 has no equivalent to the Orbix 3 I/O Callback functionality, you must migrate any code that uses it. Orbix 6 does not allow access to TCP/IP sockets or transport-level information, this is not compatible with the Orbix 6 architecture.

Orbix does not provide any tools to remove empty or surplus empty lines from an Orbix configuration file.

Using a text editor for example Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/) with the TextFX plugin installed (Plugins->Plugin Manager->Show Plugin Manager and install TextFX plugin), you can simply load the configuration file, mark all text (Ctrl+A), then select menu TextFX->TextFX Edit->Delete Surplus Blank Lines.
This removes all surplus empty lines.

Orbix does not impose a size limit on the messages sent from Client to Server. The size of the message is influenced by how the application has defined the message in the Interface Definition Language (IDL) used by the server and client.

An event service supplier program performs the following actions:
1) Instantiates suppliers using the appropriate interface in module CosEventComm
2) Connects suppliers to the event channel
3) Sends event messages to the event channel
4) Disconnects from the event channel

An event service consumer program performs the following actions:
1) Instantiates consumers with the appropriate CosEventComm interface
2) Connects consumers to the event channel
3) Obtains event messages
4) Disconnects from the event channel

Orbix Web Services does not include locator functionality for web services endpoints.

Any versions of Orbix do not support Oracle JRockit Java Virtual Machine.

Product downloads are awailable through the Micro Focus EPD (Electronic Product Delivery) portal.

The variable that sets the timeout Orbix config is:
relative_roundtrip_timeout