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CORBA for Fourth Generation Languages--Tech-X Corporation, 5541 Central Avenue, Suite 135, Boulder, CO  80301; 303-448-0728

Dr Svetlana G. Shasharina, Principal Investigator, sveta@txcorp.com  

Dr. John R. Cary, Business Official, cary@txcorp.com 

DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-00ER83107

Amount:  $745,649

The standard for object based networking is the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA).  However, CORBA is not readily available for Fourth Generation Languages (4GLs) such as Visual Numerics` PV-WAVE or Research Systems` Interactive Data Language (RSI-IDL), which are widely used by scientists and engineers in the DOE community for data visualization.  This project will develop a set of tools to allow 4GLs to interoperate with CORBA.   Software will be developed that would take as its input the Interface Definition Language (CORBA-IDL) files and result in the wrapper functions that are needed to import CORBA objects in 4GLs as well as use the CORBA objects within the 4GLs.  The software would also allow 4GLs to be used as CORBA servers.  In Phase I, existing tools (SWIG, e.g.) for wrapping C and C++ code for use in scripting languages were analyzed.  To prove feasibility, examples of bringing CORBA into PV-WAVE and RSI-IDL were developed.   Prototypes of automatic tools for wrapping C++ stubs generated by the CORBA translator for use in these languages were implemented.   Phase II will develop a parser/code-generator application, idl4gl, which will allow CORBA applications to be built for RSI-IDL and PV-WAVE.  The application, idl4gl, will (1) parse CORBA-IDL files, (2) generate C wrapping code for CORBA stubs, (3) generate 4GL to call out C wrapped CORBA stubs, (4) create a C++ CORBA servant implementation, and (5) create empty 4GL functions to be filled in by the 4GL programmer. 

Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: Such tools could be licensed to the commercial firms currently providing 4GLs.  Consulting work would also be a part of the commercial endeavor.