Experiences with distributed objects

Abstract

There has been much talk of the potential of object (component-oriented) technology for building distributed systems, especially on-line transaction services, but few opportunities or imperatives to actually use it in production systems. One such opportunity arose in the United Kingdom (UK), when legislation covering the provision of life insurance quotations changed in January 1995, rendering obsolete the existing national quotations service provided by AT&T. The necessity for change, even radical change, in the system that produced these insurance quotations had become clear nine months earlier. At that time, managers and support staff of the existing service became aware that the changes required by the legislation could not be made rapidly enough, nor reliably enough, using conventional development techniques. This paper describes how a team of developers in AT&T ISTEL used distributed objects and the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standard to implement the updated system in time for the change in legislation. Running across more than 50 Windows NT∗ servers, the system has given distributed objects operational credibility and provided valuable lessons on the technology adoption process.