SFT5000

Distributed object technology

H Schmidt

6 points
* 4 hours per week
* Second semester
* Caulfield
* Prerequisites: SFT3000 or equivalent

Objectives At the completion of this subject students should have an in-depth understanding of distributed object programming concepts and techniques and the software engineering principles and architectures used for developing these systems; master the issues involved in distributed programming and development of multi-language distributed object environments; identify how distributed object programming techniques impact on program design, performance, fault tolerance and maintenance of these systems

Synopsis This subject investigates the use of techniques in distributed object software development and how they are used to implement networked applications. Topics covered include multi-language interoperability through the use of IDL, object migration and duplication, synchronous and asynchronous method invocation, types of distributed software architectures, persistence and exception handling across program boundaries. Throughout comparisons of differing distributed object programming techniques will be made to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of different distributed object systems. Example implementations may include OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), IBM's Distributed System Object Model (DSOM), Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) and OLE.

Assessment Practical work: 50%
* Written work : 50%

Recommended texts

Brockschmidt K Inside OLE Microsoft, 1995
Grimes R Professional DCOM programming Wrox Press, 1997
Object Management Group Common Object Request Broker Architecture Wiley-QED
Rogerson D Inside COM Microsoft, 1997
Siegel J CORBA Fundamentals and Programming Wiley