[erlang-questions] Bidirectional GIOP

[Niclas Eklund]

Hello!

The ORB_ENV_USE_BI_DIR_IIOP flag is currently ignored, which is why it
hasn't been documented.

As you might know, GIOP messages can be framented. The FragmenHeader_1_2
struct only contains the request_id (GIOP 1.2), which makes it impossible
to know if the fragment belongs to a Request or Reply if Bidirectional
IIOP is allowed. Ok, this requires that both ORB:s concurrently has an
active request assigned the same request number. The risk is very slim,
but if both ORB:s support the Fault Tolerant specification that problem is
solved. Since an ORB must be able to handle fragmented GIOP messages and
can choose to ignore the Bidirectional service context, supporting
fragmented messages is more important.

The advantage with Bidirectional IIOP is that it might be easier to
configure a firewall, but since Orber supports a number of configuration
parameters that allows you to narrow the interfaces and ports that will be
used, this feature isn't very important. See, for example, the
configuration parameters iiop_out_ports, ip_address and ip_address_local.
You should also read the chapters 'Firewall Configuration' and 'Interface
Configuration' in Orber's User's Guide.

/Niclas


On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Giacomo Olgeni wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I was trying to activate bidirectional GIOP in Orber and found a
> ORB_ENV_USE_BI_DIR_IIOP flag in orber_iiop.hrl, however it is not
> documented in the Orber guide. Is it considered safe for production
> use?
> 
> Kind regards,
>    Jimmy
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