An Interoperable Object Reference (IOR) is a
CORBA
The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between s ...
or
RMI-IIOP reference
Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a '' name'' ...
that uniquely identifies an
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
on a remote CORBA server.
IORs can be transmitted in binary over
TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...
via the
General Inter-ORB Protocol
In distributed computing, General Inter-ORB Protocol (GIOP) is the message protocol by which object request brokers (ORBs) communicate in CORBA. Standards associated with the protocol are maintained by the Object Management Group (OMG). The curren ...
(the encoding may be
big-endian or little-endian), or serialized into a string of hexadecimal digits (prefixed by the string ''
IOR:'') to facilitate transport by non-CORBA mechanisms such as
HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
,
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
, and
e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
.
The internal structure of an IOR may contain multiple components. Each component is identified by its integer code and has its own binary format. The codes are assigned by the
Object Management Group
The Object Management Group (OMG) is a computer industry standards consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a range of technologies.
Business activities
The goal of the OMG was a common portable and interoperab ...
. The typical IOR normally contains the IP address of the remote host, the number of the remote port on that the CORBA server is listening, a string defining the class of the remote object on which the methods will be invoked, and the object key that is used by the server ORB to identify the object.
It is possible to register special objects (IOR interceptors) that can add the needed specific components to the IOR being created by the particular
ORB.
Common Object Request Broker Architecture
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