Java IDL 1.2 README

Welcome to Java IDL. Thank you for your interest in this product and for taking the time to download the software and documentation.

This README contains two general areas of information:

1. Information about the idltojava compiler
2. Information about unimplemented features in the Java IDL API

INFORMATION ABOUT THE IDLTOJAVA COMPILER

• Downloading the idltojava Compiler
• idltojava Limitations in This Release
• Java IDL Known Bugs

The tool idltojava must be downloaded separately. It is available from the following web page:

	http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/earlyAccess/jdk12/idltojava.html

When you have finished downloading the idltojava compiler, you will have a file with the extension ".bin". Just run this file (type the filename at the command line), and it will automatically unbundle itself. You must do this before you can use the idltojava compiler.

idltojava LIMITATIONS IN THIS RELEASE

• #pragma ID and #pragma version are not supported; #pragma prefix can appear only at global scope.

• Java IDL's tool idltojava allows modules to be reopened, but all declarations (particularly the ones in the earlier incantation of the module) must be fully qualified. For example:

    module M {
      interface I { };
    };
  
    module M {
      interface J : M::I { };
    };
  

Java IDL KNOWN BUGS

The following is a list of known bugs in this Java IDL release:

• idltojava does not handle declarations nested inside IDL structs, unions, or exceptions.

• idltojava generates illegal code in the Java programming language for Unions with boolean discriminants.

FEATURES THAT ARE NOT IMPLEMENTED

The documentation for the API in Java IDL is intended to describe what the behavior of the API should be, according to the OMG specification. Even though Java Software does not implement all of the API, several of the APIs in org.omg.CORBA are presented so that a licensee can do the implementation. The following list specifies which features or APIs are not implemented in this release:

• Interface Repository. An Interface Repository is not required for normal operation of Java IDL. Java IDL clients can access an Interface Repository provided by another Java or C++ ORB. The method org.omg.CORBA.Object.get_interface will throw an org.omg.CORBA.NO_IMPLEMENT exception if the target server object is implemented in Java IDL. However, if the target server object's ORB provides an Interface Repository, the method org.omg.CORBA.Object.get_interface will return successfully.

• RMI/IIOP

• Objects-by-Value

• Of the recently added type extensions to IDL, only longlong (signed and unsigned) is supported. The wide character IDL types wchar and wstring are not supported. The types long double and fixed are also not supported.

• Deferred (asynchronous) sends in the Dynamic Invocation Interface are not implemented. In particular, the methods org.omg.CORBA.Request.send_deferred and org.omg.CORBA.send_multiple_requests_deferred will throw the exception org.omg.CORBA.NO_IMPLEMENT.

• Recursive TypeCodes are not implemented. This means that org.omg.CORBA.Any objects for recursive IDL types (for example, recursive sequences) cannot be created.

• The method org.omg.CORBA.Any.equal is not implemented for complex TypeCodes (tk_objref, tk_Principal, tk_struct, tk_union, tk_sequence, tk_array, tk_alias, and tk_except).

• There is no implementation for org.omg.CORBA.DynAny and other dynamic-Any interfaces.

• The API for org.omg.CORBA.Context is not implemented.

• Policies (org.omg.CORBA.Policy) and methods for getting them aren't implemented

• Domain managers (org.omg.CORBA.DomainManager) and methods for getting them aren't implemented

• org.omg.CORBA.ServiceInformation and ORB methods for getting these objects aren't implemented

• org.omg.CORBA.portable.ServantObject and Delegate/ObjectImpl methods _servant_preinvoke, _servant_postinvoke and _is_local aren't implemented

• ORB methods for supporting single-threading (perform_work, work_pending) aren't implemented

• TypeCodes for native types (ORB.create_native_tc) aren't implemented