OMF-an object request broker for the process control application domain

Abstract

Long before middleware became a market topic and professional providers offered out of the box functionality, industry like Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), had to provide solutions, which were based on what we today call middleware. Consequently, many industrial firms developed their own solutions. We describe an ABB proprietary middleware product called Object Management Facility (OMF). We present all its architectural properties and functional features. Wherever meaningful, we compare OMF's abilities with those offered by DCOM and CORBA and for some aspects important to the domain of control systems, we show that even today, OMF can compete with commercially available middleware products.