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13.2.1 The Nature of ORB Services


   ORB Services are invoked implicitly in the course of application-level interactions. ORB Services range from fundamental mechanisms such as reference resolution and message encoding to advanced features such as support for security, transactions, or replication.

   An ORB Service is often related to a particular transparency. For example, message encoding – the marshaling and unmarshaling of the components of a request into and out of message buffers – provides transparency of the representation of the request. Similarly, reference resolution supports location transparency. Some transparencies, such as security, are supported by a combination of ORB Services and Object Services while others, such as replication, may involve interactions between ORB Services themselves.

   ORB Services differ from Object Services in that they are positioned below the application and are invoked transparently to the application code. However, many ORB Services include components which correspond to conventional Object Services in that they are invoked explicitly by the application.

   Security is an example of service with both ORB Service and normal Object Service components, the ORB components being those associated with transparently authenticating messages and controlling access to objects while the necessary administration and management functions resemble conventional Object Services.