IDLflex: A flexible and generic compiler for CORBA IDL

IDLflex: A flexible and generic compiler for CORBA IDL

Hans Reiser, Martin Steckermeier, Franz J. Hauck

english Sep. 10, 2001, 12 pages

TR-I4-01-08

[Abstract] [Full Paper (ps,http) , 147 kB] [Full Paper (pdf) , 48 kB]

Abstract: For the development of CORBA applications, an IDL compiler is needed that generates code for communication stubs, helper classes and implementation skeletons. For each IDL language mapping, for every version of a particular language mapping, and for every CORBA implementation, the generated code has to be different. Typically many different compilers have to be programmed because the code generation is usually hard-wired into a compiler. IDLflex is a generic IDL compiler which is able to generate arbitrary code for arbitrary languages. Only a mapping program written in an XML-based mapping language and a language-specific utility class have to be provided. Thus, IDLflex can be adapted to another language, another mapping or to another ORB implementation in a very fast way. Furthermore, IDLflex allows to easily integrate additional functionality into a CORBA-based system, as it was done within the AspectIX middleware project.