[45] INITIALIZATION SERVICE
(Part of the CORBA FAQ, Copyright © 1996-99)

[45.1] WHAT IS THE INITIALIZATION SERVICE?

[Recently created (3/1999). Click here to go to the next FAQ in the “chain” of recent changes]

The Initialization Service is used to find well-known system and user-defined services. The Initialization Service is best understood in the catch-22 presented by the Name Service:

1. If the Name Service holds the system’s application object references (IOR)...
2. ...and the Name Service, itself, is composed of NamingContext objects (IORs) for storing and retreiving application IORs...
3. ...and a client cannot access an object until it has its IOR...
4. ...then, how does a client get a reference to a root NamingContext?

The answer to the above question is that the reference has to be supplied to the client administratively. The Initialization Service provides a simple interface into this administrative information. The method is named “resolve_initial_reference()” and takes a string representing the name of the service, and returns a CORBA::Object accessing that service.

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