[1] AUTHORS, COPYRIGHT, PERMISSIONS, INTENDED AUDIENCE, NAVIGATION UPDATED!
(Part of the CORBA FAQ, Copyright © 1996-99)


[1.1] THE AUTHORS (ALPHABETICALLY) UPDATED!

[Recently updated author list (3/1999) and updated author list (10/1999). Click here to go to the next FAQ in the “chain” of recent changes]

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[1.2] ABOUT ROB APPELBAUM UPDATED!

[Recently updated the bio (12/1998) and updated the bio (10/1999). Click here to go to the next FAQ in the “chain” of recent changes]

Rob Appelbaum is serving as an author/maintainer of the CORBA FAQ, plus was one of its originators.

CONTACT INFO:

Robert Appelbaum
212-539-0848
rob@effectivecomputing.com
Home page

BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE:

Rob Appelbaum is a senior consultant focusing on software development and information technology. His focus is on technologies including CORBA, Java, C++, UML, Object Database, Relational Database, and Distributed Computing.

Over the last several years, he has participated in various phases of projects leveraging technology such as CORBA, Java, C++, and Database. Prior to consulting on these projects, he performed systems engineering and product architecture roles at both CORBA and RDBMS vendors. He has also published a number of articles in a variety of trade magazines.

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[1.3] ABOUT LESTER CLAUDIO NEW!

[Recently created (10/1999). Click here to go to the next FAQ in the “chain” of recent changes]

Lester Claudio is serving as an author/maintainer of the CORBA FAQ.

CONTACT INFO:

Lester Claudio
719-265-9344
lester.claudio@iona.com
Home page

IONA Technologies, Inc.
4600 South Ulster Street, Suite 700
Denver, CO 80237-2882

SUMMARY:

Lester Claudio has over twelve years experience in Unix and client/server application development, including migrating legacy systems to CORBA. Lester obtained a B.Sc. Computer Science from University of Maryland, and his M.Sc at Colorado Tech University.

Mr. Claudio has been technical team lead of various projects in the telecomms and manufacturing industries, including assignments at a major telecomms provider and retail manufacturer. Additionally, Lester has extensive experience with requirements analysis and component interface design.

EXPERIENCE:

Developed a CORBA interface for a major RDBMS company’s product that allowed customers to define CORBA objects from DB schema and method DLLs and write clients to these interfaces.

Lead technical advisor and group lead for a major re-engineering effort. Developed initial business object model and continued in the development of the IDL-defined Business Object Model. Lead for a 8-person group implementing an On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) infrastructure using the CORBA standard and Versant OODBMS as the object database. The OLTP development involved object communications using Orbix between Windows NT clients, a Cray Superserver and IBM RS6000, using Versant as the OODBMS of choice. Designed and implemented the MQ Messaging infrastructure and the Object Database Interface (ODB) layer over Versant. Developed a C++ Class library over the MQ Series product to provide messaging functionality to legacy systems.

Developed a legacy messaging system based on the SUN Remote Procedure Call (RPC) implementation over the TCP/IP protocol suite. The system involved communications from OS/2 clients and MVS mainframes. Led a team of 3 people in the development of the messaging system under the OS/2, AIX and Solaris platforms.

Worked in conjunction with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the development of the File Transfer Access and Management (FTAM) protocol and the Government OSI Profile (GOSIP) addressing scheme. Performed the first FTAM file transfer, using GOSIP compliant addressing, through the Defense Data Network (DDN).

EDUCATION:

M.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Colorado Tech University, Colorado Springs, CO.

B.S. in Computer Science from University of Maryland, Eastern Shore.

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[1.4] ABOUT JIM WATSON UPDATED!

[Recently created (12/1998) and updated the bio (10/1999). Click here to go to the next FAQ in the “chain” of recent changes]

Jim Watson is serving as an author/maintainer of the CORBA FAQ.

CONTACT INFO:

Jim Watson
703-549-9395
jim.watson@iona.com
Home page

IONA Technologies, Inc.
2329 South Joyce Street
Arlington, VA 22202

SUMMARY:

Ph.D. with over ten years experience in various object technologies, including architecture, modeling, and implementation of large-scale distributed object systems. Founder of Aurora Technologies, Inc., a consultancy and training company focusing on developing and delivering OO and CORBA-based systems. Results oriented.

Frequent speaker at ObjectWorld and IONA World conferences. Book reviewer for Addison-Wesley works on CORBA and OO.

EXPERIENCE:

Architect and development team lead for a multi-million dollar project for a major retail clothing manufacturer to develop a new CORBA-based sales planning and marketing system. Designed approximately 150 IDL interface/structure specifications for the system integration and common services components. Developed framework to integrate CORBA servers with RDBMS and legacy data warehouse. Led server design and implementation teams.

CORBA architect on very large project for major telecommunications company to develop a CORBA-based customer and product tracking system. Analyzed system for appropriate units-of-work for distributed computing, and designed the IDL interfaces for the business objects, business transactions, and common services, including replication and event management. Developed OODBMS integration framework.

Lead architect and implementer for a commercial software product that integrates a ORDBMS and CORBA. Designed and implemented schema mapping tools (DB schema to IDL), code generators, and flexible Gateway server to allow CORBA-compliant clients to access the DB. Product delivered on-schedule and on-budget, and passed extensive user-acceptance testing.

Consultant to large aircraft manufacturer on initial requirements and approaches for development of CORBA/Orbix system for manufacturing. Worked with data integrity team on transaction and event issues. Worked with application and process modeling teams on initial design.

Consultant to international telecommunications company developing a commercial video-on-demand system, using Java and CORBA. Analyzed and designed Java components and their integration with CORBA. Developed an end-to-end prototype incorporating downloadable Java applets, communicating with CORBA (Orbix) servers utilizing an OODBMS for storage. Advised on CORBA, Java, and OODBMS issues, and various architectural/design problems including scalability and security.

System Architect for Army-sponsored distributed OO interactive simulation system. Applied CORBA to develop communications and control foundation for the parallel computing infrastructure. Developed object model for system. Technical Lead for C++ design and implementation team, using OODBMS. Implemented many CORBA-compliant middleware services, including Object Locator, Initialization, and Eventing, in addition to the legacy model interfaces, and several GUI components.

Lead architect and project manager for migration of legacy financial system to OO. Developed IDL-defined Business Object Model, and implemented CORBA-compliant distribution. Designed and implemented Business Objects in IDL/C++. Designed and implemented CORBA servers to wrap legacy applications and provide access to business objects in large RDBMS.

Instructor for various introductory, advanced, and managerial courses on CORBA, Orbix, OO design, and C++ programming.

EDUCATION:

Ph.D. in Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

Ricketts Prize winner for outstanding Ph.D. research.

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[1.5] ABOUT MARSHALL CLINE UPDATED!

[Recently updated the bio (12/1998). Click here to go to the next FAQ in the “chain” of recent changes]

Marshall Cline was one of the originators of the CORBA FAQ. He served as an author & maintainer until the end of 1998.

CONTACT INFO:

Marshall Cline
972-931-9470
cline@parashift.com

MT Systems Company
5419 Bent Tree Dr.
Dallas, TX 75248

SUMMARY:

Solves problems often by providing a bridge between business and technology. Known for being practical and business oriented. Has successfully led large teams (hundreds of people) and large projects (in the ten to hundred million dollar budget range). Experience reducing risk in high-visibility situations (for example, systems that handle tens of billions of dollars per year). Multi-year repeat business from several Fortune 500 organizations. Experience transitioning organizations to emerging technologies.

Global audience of a half million people in various writings including two books, numerous articles, the official FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) Internet/Web sites for C++ and CORBA, etc. Listed in several Who’s Who publications and member of two National Honorary Societies. Principal Voting Member of two national standardization efforts. Guest editor of the Special Issue of IEEE Computer on Managing OO Development (with M. Fayad). Past Editor, IEEE Computer Society Practices in Computer science and Engineering. Pragmatic and results oriented.

EXPERIENCE:

Has diagnosed and prescribed solutions for systemic problems within numerous technology teams and organizations. For example, was sponsored by a CEO to find out why his technical organization was failing to deliver. In addition, served as senior OO consultant to IBM throughout North America, and have evaluating the health of several IBM teams and projects that had budgets in the ten to one hundred million dollar range.

Has helped clients significantly improve their cycle-time. For example, one client is now able to do certain critical functions in a few days that used to take nine months. Another client’s cycle-time was reduced from six weeks to a couple of days.

Has improved clients’ success rate for delivering on time and under budget. For example, developed the people and technology systems that enabled a Fortune 50 organization succeed on a high-visibility, high-risk project despite the organization’s repeated failure to meet delivery schedules and quality standards. Also, has developed a common-sense approach to project management that helps organizations meet their schedules, especially when they are using new / emerging technologies such as OO, distributed objects, and the Web (co-author: M. Girou).

Has transitioned large organizations to new technologies. For example, provided the core OO consulting, design, and mentoring for the 150+ developers who built the software for IBM’s 64 bit AS/400. The result was 2x price/performance gain to customers and 10x development efficiency.

Has worked at various levels within a client organization. For example, has worked with senior management including CEO, at the CIO level, with IS Directors, with marketing, etc.

Understands scale. For example, led the design and development of the core foundational framework for a Call Center application that manages a $20+B revenue stream, was the lead OO consultant for one of the largest successful OO projects ever at IBM Rochester MN, created a distributed object architecture for a wireless system that spans New York City for Brooklyn Union.

Has provided direction to organizations and teams doing custom software development, as well as to organizations and teams doing system integration. For example, provided advice at the CEO level to Perot Systems, a medium sized systems integrator. Other examples include consulting at the CIO and IT Director levels at Allstate and CSX.

Developed a new approach for capturing business requirements and for creating a reasonable software design (co-author: M. Girou). This approach improves the likelihood that the technical people will deliver the right thing by improving marketing and management control over software specification and development.

Has provided product strategy consulting to Fortune 50 clients. For example, for IBM development labs and as a consequence of the role of senior OO consultant to IBM.

Has developed a technique along with supporting tools that enables organizations to integrate legacy applications and subsystems without getting permanently locked in to a vendor (co-author: M. Girou).

Invited speaker in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, the Middle East, and China. Spoken to thousands of business and software professionals in numerous companies. Mentored and trained thousands of people in object technology. Speaking engagements consistently get high reviews.

Strong business background-eight years running a small company. Strong technical background-fifteen years on the Internet, twelve years with OO, have been with Java since it was called OAK.

Developed the C++ FAQ; published on the Internet since 1991; over three hundred thousand readers, est. Co-author of the book C++ FAQs with G. Lomow and M. Girou; the initial printing (7,500) sold out within 3 months; the book sold over ten times that many copies; at the publisher’s request, a second edition was created. Developed the CORBA FAQ with M. Girou and R. Appelbaum, first published on the Web in 1996.

EDUCATION:

Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clarkson University, 1989. GPA 3.9.

Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clarkson University, 1984. GPA 3.7.

Bachelor of Science in Physics, St. Lawrence University, 1981. GPA 3.5 overall, 3.9 in major area; graduated cum laude; multiple Dean’s list & scholar awards.

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[1.6] ABOUT MIKE GIROU UPDATED!

[Recently updated the bio (12/1998). Click here to go to the next FAQ in the “chain” of recent changes]

Mike Girou was one of the originators of the CORBA FAQ. He served as an author & maintainer until the end of 1998.

CONTACT INFO:

Mike Girou
972-690-0685
mgirou@home.com

MT Systems Company
2538 Big Horn Lane
Richardson, TX 75080

SUMMARY:

A businessman and technologist with practical skills and a history of successful problem solving. Educated as a mathematician, has over twenty years experience in application of emerging technology to business problems. Has developed strong background in certain areas of finance and trading.

OBJECT-ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY:

Twelve years experience with applying object-oriented technology to practical problems in finance and telephony. Served on ANSI X3J20 (Smalltalk) standards committee, voting member of X3J16 (U.S. C++ standards committee) and WG21 (international C++ standards committee). Partnership with Marshall Cline has resulted in several important OO papers and Addison-Wesley book on C++. Co-author of the CORBA FAQ on the Internet.

Acted as senior OO consultant to IBM throughout North America, advising on product strategy, mentoring, and performing internal audits. Also involved in many important client engagements, doing project assessments, transition plans, and evaluations of people and technology.

Developed major OO systems for futures trading, cellular telephony and call centers. Architect of a wireless distributed object system. Chief OO architect of a securities block trading system. Designed and implemented OOUI for a resource management system. Project manager of a major military electronics system based on OO. Developed new approach to requirement analysis and design.

FINANCE:

Active futures and options trader with Series 3 license. Associated person with Bishop Enderby, an oil and gas CTA that was once ranked as the top-performing investment advisor in the nation over a three-year period. Developed new models for price performance, presented ideas before the Chicago Board of Trade, and published research in refereed finance journals. Developed mathematical trading ideas that have been used successfully for equities as well as commodities.

Technology consultant to several brokerage houses. Consultant to computer companies on back-office operations and processing. One of the leaders in applying distributed objects to proprietary trading. Consultant on electronic matching engines and ECNs.

OTHER SKILLS:

As a mathematician and computer scientist, have solved several well-known problems. Primary person behind the so-called Girou-McIllwain-Pettey model of finance, closed the last open problems in locally H-closed spaces (general topology), and worked with Hal Sudborough to solve some difficult parallel computer network embedding problems. Solved a difficult problem in experimental design with Dix Pettey.

As a manager and entrepreneur, have strong background in building small to medium scale organizations. Have started several companies from scratch, some succeeded, some failed. Have managed development organizations with more than one hundred employees and have shown skill in developing leaders. Above all, a very practical approach to getting results. As a consultant, have many years’ experience working with large corporations and their special brand of reality.

Varied industry knowledge based on years of custom software development and consulting. Have backgrounds of varying depth in finance, construction, securities, telephony, equipment leasing, classified government contracting, nuclear energy, agriculture, utilities, and transportation.

CREDENTIALS:

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

PARTIAL LIST OF CLIENTS:

IBM, Perot Systems, Brooklyn Union Gas, VMI Corp., Cenex, Federal Express, Financial SciencesCorp, Fimat, Allstate, CSX, McCaw Cellular (ATT), Optimark, Groupe Bull, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, GTE, SAM Corp.

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[1.7] COPYRIGHT NOTICE

The CORBA FAQ document is Copyright © 1996-99, Rob Appelbaum, Lester Claudio, Jim Watson, Marshall Cline, and Mike Girou. All rights reserved. Copying is permitted only under designated situations.

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[1.8] NO WARRANTY

THIS WORK IS PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” BASIS. THE AUTHORS PROVIDE NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THE WORK, INCLUDING WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO ITS MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

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[1.9] COPYING PERMISSIONS

The Authors hereby authorize you to copy portions or the entirety of the CORBA FAQ for your own personal use. If you want to redistribute any portions of the CORBA FAQ to others (even for free), you must get permission from the authors first (and that permission is normally granted; note however that it’s often easier for you to simply tell your recipients about the one-click download option). In any event, all copies you make must retain verbatim and display conspicuously all the following: all copyright notices, the Authors section, the Copyright Notice section, the No Warranty section, and the Copying Permissions section.

If you want more and/or different privileges than are outlined here, please contact us. We’re very reasonable...

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[1.10] TRADEMARKS

Note: We’d like to list all trademarks explicitly; please let us know about who owns what trademark and we’ll name them explicitly; thanks!

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[1.11] WHAT THE INTENDED AUDIENCE LOOKS LIKE

Our goal is to make the CORBA FAQ be a practical guide for how to use CORBA to build real-life distributed applications, rather than merely to show what it is. In other words, the document will be tailored to developers who intend to use CORBA to build applications, not to developers who are going to build a new CORBA-compliant ORB.

This is in a similar spirit to C++ FAQ.

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[1.12] “MORALITY IN ADDITION TO JUST “LEGALITY

We have included/will include “things that can cause your project to fail,” rather than merely showing syntax and programming rules. We are presenting what is moral in addition to what is legal. I.e., what you “should” and “shouldn’t” do in addition to what you “can” and “can’t” do.

This approach was well-received on the C++ FAQ, which is based loosely on a similar model.

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[1.13] TUTORIAL

The CORBA FAQ includes a tutorial that gives a top-down perspective of how to use CORBA to build distributed applications. This will (hopefully!) make it possible for people who are new to CORBA to read and understand the FAQ.

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[1.14] FOUR DIFFERENT WAYS TO NAVIGATE THE CORBA FAQ

  1. Use the table of contents or the exhaustive TOC if you want to read section-by-section or if you want to scan for a topic.
  2. Use the extensive Subject Index if you’re looking for a specific topic in the CORBA FAQ.
  3. Use the hyper-linked chain of FAQs that are NEW! or UPDATED! if you want to see what’s changed since the last time you read the CORBA FAQ.
  4. Use the alphabetical list of all FAQs if you remember the name of a FAQ you’ve read in the past, but you can’t remember which section it’s in.

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[1.15] HOW CAN I GET A COPY OF ALL THE HTML FILES OF THE CORBA FAQ SO I CAN READ THEM OFF-LINE?

Here’s how you can get a bundled and compressed copy of the HTML files of the CORBA FAQ e-mailed to you:

  1. Select a format (.zip is common on Windows and the Mac, .tar.Z and .tar.gz are common on UNIX), then click the associated button below (but only click it once). You won’t see a confirmation page in your Web browser (although some browsers show you an e-mail window; if so, just click “SEND”):
    If that doesn't work then send an e-mail message to cline-corba-faq-html-zip@crynwr.com (for .zip), cline-corba-faq-html-tarz@crynwr.com (for .tar.Z), or cline-corba-faq-html-targz@crynwr.com (for .tar.gz) [the contents and “Subject:” of the email message are irrelevant].
  2. Wait a few minutes, then check your e-mail. If you don’t receive an e-mail message containing the bundled FAQ, wait a while longer and check again. If you still haven’t received it after waiting an entire day, something is wrong and you can send us e-mail or try again.
  3. Once you receive the FAQ in your e-mail, unpack the FAQ using the instructions contained in the associated e-mail message.

Restriction: you must still abide by the Copyright Notice and Copying Permissions. In particular, you must not redistribute the CORBA FAQ to others without permission from the authors. If you want to redistribute the CORBA FAQ to someone else, the easiest way is to tell them about this one-click download feature, and let them get their own copy.

Restriction: the FAQ uses “long filenames.” If your machine can’t handle long filenames (e.g., if it’s DOS and/or Windows 3.x), you cannot unpack the FAQ. UNIX, Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Mac all handle long filenames correctly.

Note: e-mail was selected over FTP or HTTP.

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[1.16] HOW CAN I GET A COPY OF ALL THE PLAINTEXT FILES OF THE CORBA FAQ SO I CAN READ THEM OFF-LINE?

The “plaintext” version of the CORBA FAQ is posted monthly on comp.object.corba. These simple text files are mechanically produced by stripping the HTML tags from the HTML files on the Web site. Therefore the plaintext files aren’t as pretty to look at and don’t have the hyper-linked cross references, but they have basically the same information as the HTML files.

Here’s how you can get a bundled and compressed copy of the plaintext files of the CORBA FAQ e-mailed to you:

  1. Select a format (.zip is common on Windows and the Mac, .tar.Z and .tar.gz are common on UNIX), then click the associated button below (but only click it once). You won’t see a confirmation page in your Web browser (although some browsers show you an e-mail window; if so, just click “SEND”):
    If that doesn't work then send an e-mail message to cline-corba-faq-plaintext-zip@crynwr.com (for .zip), cline-corba-faq-plaintext-tarz@crynwr.com (for .tar.Z), or cline-corba-faq-plaintext-targz@crynwr.com (for .tar.gz) [the contents and “Subject:” of the email message are irrelevant].
  2. Wait a few minutes, then check your e-mail. If you don’t receive an e-mail message containing the bundled FAQ, wait a while longer and check again. If you still haven’t received it after waiting an entire day, something is wrong and you can send us e-mail or try again.
  3. Once you receive the FAQ in your e-mail, unpack the FAQ using the instructions contained in the associated e-mail message.

Restriction: you must still abide by the Copyright Notice and Copying Permissions. In particular, you must not redistribute the CORBA FAQ to others without permission from the authors. If you want to redistribute the CORBA FAQ to someone else, the easiest way is to tell them about this one-click download feature, and let them get their own copy.

Note: e-mail was selected over FTP or HTTP.

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[1.17] WHY IS THE DOWNLOAD VIA EMAIL? WHY NOT VIA FTP?

Using FTP or HTTP would have a “cache coherency” problem.

Based on our experience with the C++ FAQ, we’ve noticed a tendancy for there to be a lot of out-of-date (nay, ancient) copies of FAQ floating around the Internet. This causes a lot of confusion since these ancient versions often contain bugs, missed features, and generally outdated information. Not only has it caused confusion for many, it has resulted in a plethora of worthless email in our inboxes. No matter how we tried, we could never get “over the hump”: no matter how clear we made the current version of the FAQ, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people were unaware that they were reading an outdated version. That made it harder for both them and us.

By downloading the CORBA FAQ via email rather than ftp, we’re able to provide an extra service for people: the robot mailer (the Perl script that sends the FAQ copies to everyone) remembers which version of the FAQ each person has, and when someone’s version becomes out of date, the robot will send them a courtesy email. Something like, “Your copy of the FAQ is out of date; if you want to upgrade, click here”.

The goal is to help you keep up-to-date, so you won’t end up reading outdated information. And also to keep our inboxes from getting flooded with questions from confused readers who are reading a copy of the FAQ written before the Wheel was invented.

So please please don’t send us e-mail asking for an FTP address since there isn’t one. Thanks!

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Revised Oct 27, 1999