Installing the Lab Assignment 3

1. Install CORBA

For this lab we will use the ORBacus implementation of CORBA. ORBacus is located in the /home/TDDB37/ORB4 directory. In order to access the IDL compilers, set the PATH environment variable to point to /home/TDDB37/ORB4/bin: setenv PATH /home/TDDB37/ORB4/bin:"$PATH"
Since the ORBacus distribution was compiled with shared libraries, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable has to be set to point to /home/TDDB37/ORB4/lib: setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /home/TDDB37/ORB4/lib:"$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
Moreover, because our ORBacus installation was compiled with gcc-3.2.0, you'll have to set your programs to use the shared libraries of this compiler: setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /home/TDDB37/gcc-3.2.0/lib:"$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

2. C++

To implement CORBA applications in C++ the gcc 3.2.0 compiler has to be used. This compiler is installed in the course directory, /home/TDDB37/gcc-3.2.0/. Just make sure that you add the following line to your system configuration before you start compiling your code: setenv /home/TDDB37/gcc-3.2.0/bin:"$PATH"
Also, have a look at the Makefile to understand the compilation process. Take care when compiling programs which use the NameService, as you'll have to indicate the linker to use the appropriate library by adding the flag -lCosNaming.

3. Java

ORBacus works with Java 1.1 and higher. If you use Java 1.1.x, the examples and your programs should work just fine.

Anyway, if you plan to implement the applications in Java 1.2 or higher (we reccomend Java 1.3.1_02), you have to insert in your programs, at the beginning, the following lines of code:

        java.util.Properties props = System.getProperties();
        props.put("org.omg.CORBA.ORBClass", "com.ooc.CORBA.ORB");
        props.put("org.omg.CORBA.ORBSingletonClass",
                  "com.ooc.CORBA.ORBSingleton");
        System.setProperties(props);

Java 1.2 and later versions have their own ORB developed at JavaSoft, Sun Microsystems. Normally, you can use that ORB instead of ORBacus. We chose ORBacus because it has mappings for both C++ and Java, so you explicitly have to indicate in your program the use of ORBacus, like in the code above taken from the Client.java.

In order for the Java to find the ORBacus implementation, the CLASSPATH environment variable has to be set to include the ORBacus classes:

setenv CLASSPATH .:/home/TDDB37/ORB4/lib/OB.jar:$CLASSPATH

If you want to run your java applications as applets, have a look at the Hello.html file generated by the Server.java in the Hello World! example. Use the "appletviewer instead of netscape to view your applets. For example, appletviewer Hello.html