The Object Management Group (OMG) has published a beta of version 1.0 of its REST for CORBA specification.
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard for facilitating communication between systems deployed on different operating systems, programming languages, and hardware.
The specification describes a standard way for CORBA objects to be exposed as REST architecture services. It provides standard Interface Definition Language (IDL) annotations to do so.
It also defines Data Representation Formats that can be used to externalize objects that are defined in the IDL Type Representation format to JSON and XML Data Representation formats. According to OMG, a Data Representation Format “defines how objects of the types defined by the IDL Type System may be externalized.” This allows them to be stored or communicated over a network.
JSON and XML are typically used in REST applications. They offer an alternative to the encoding mechanism of the Common Data Representation format that is used in CORBA applications.
“This new spec will enable pure REST clients to use CORBA services through the exposed REST façade transparently,” said Matteo Vescovi, Technical Architect at Micro Focus, which submitted the application. “These IDL annotations, known as IDL-RS, strive to comply with the REST architectural style. The design assumes that HTTP is the underlying network transport layer protocol, so we aim to provide a clear mapping between HTTP resources and the corresponding CORBA objects.”
