Managing Object Request Brokers

An Object Request Broker (ORB) manages the interaction between clients and servers using the Internet InterORB Protocol (IIOP). There are several ways to manage an ORB. For example, you can use ORB custom property settings, or system property settings to configure an ORB, or you can provide objects during ORB initialization.

About this task

Default ORB property values are set when the product starts and the ORB service initializes. These properties control the run-time behavior of the ORB and can also affect the behavior of product components that are tightly integrated with the ORB, such as security. You might have to modify some ORB settings to fit your system requirements.

After an ORB instance is established in a process, changes to ORB properties do not affect the behavior of a running ORB instance. You must stop the process and restart it before the modified settings take effect.

A list of possible tasks for managing an ORB follows.

Procedure

  • Adjust timeout settings to improve handling of network failures.
    [IBM i]Before making these adjustments, review the Object Request Broker tuning guidelines.
  • Tune the ORB.
    For example, if most of your initial method invocations are very small, you might want to set the com.ibm.CORBA.enableLocateRequest custom property to false.
  • Adjust the size of General Inter-ORB Protocol (GIOP) fragments that the ORB uses.
    You might want to make this adjustment if your applications frequently send large requests.
  • Change the port that the ORB listens on.
  • Specify an alternative to the default RAS manager of the ORB.
  • Change the maximum number of connection requests that can remain unhandled by the product ORB before the application server starts to reject new incoming connection requests.
  • [IBM i]Adjust thread-pool settings used by the ORB for handling Internet InterORB Protocol (IIOP) connections.
  • [IBM i]Troubleshoot an ORB problem.

    If you experience problems with the ORB, you should review the Object request broker troubleshooting tips. If necessary, you can then enable ORB tracing, and then review the contents of the ORB communications trace.

  • [IBM i]Adjust the logical pool distribution mechanism settings.