HP Labs Technical Reports

CORBA Transactions Through Firewalls

Ingham, David; Rees, Owen; Norman, Andy

HPL-1999-50

Keyword(s): atomic transactions; electronic commerce; security; firewalls; CORBA

Abstract: Electronic commerce on the Internet is evolving from simpler customer-to-customer (C2B) interactions, such as online shopping, to more complex business-to- business (B2B) applications, so called extranet applications. This class of application differs from C2B as back-office processing is typically required within each organisation. CORBA provides abstractions and transparencies that make it a good candidate technology for building such applications; organisations are required to agree on object interfaces but are free to implement objects in their preferred language using their chosen ORB vendor. Multi-party interactions introduce complex failure modes and, given the unpredictable quality of service of the Internet, occasional failures are likely to occur. Atomic transactions are a well known structuring technique for ensuring the overall consistency of system state in the presence of concurrent access and occasional failure. Transactions therefore appear an appropriate technology to support extranet applications. The use of CORBA transactions for supporting extranet applications is complicated by the use of organisational firewalls. Conventional firewall technology that operates by restricting access based on port numbers and protocols is not appropriate for CORBA, which abstracts away from these concepts. This paper describes the issues involved and shows how they can be addressed using an advanced CORBA object gateway. Notes: David Ingham, Department of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK

20 Pages

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