CORBA35 — Implications about BiDirIds

I'll use the following example to explain the implications that I derive from my understanding about the spec. I hope that it makes sense to you. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

Suppose I set up a client that has some POAs with BI_DIR_EXPORT policy ALLOW. The client wants to invoke a server that accepts bi-directional GIOP. This invocation will cause callbacks to a few objects on the client using bi-directional GIOP. The server is not allowed to create new connections to the client.

In the code of my client application, I can simply use the following statement to invoke the target object. And I would expect that the target object will call back some of the objects on the client ORB during this invocation.

obj = ...; // target
obj.invoke_target(...);

In order for the above scenario to work, I derive the following implications from the spec.

1. This invocation requires the target to call back on some of the objects on the client ORB. Because the client ORB has no knowledge about what objects might be called back, the client ORB has to ensure that the BiDirIds on all of its POAs that have EXPORT policy ALLOW must be available at the server side.

This conclusion also implies that the client ORB may have to track what BiDirIds that have been sent (and accepted) over every connection that allows bi-directional GIOP in order to figure out what BiDirIds have not yet been sent, assuming that you don't want to send all BiDirIds in every request. Furthermore, when someone creates a new POA with the EXPORT policy ALLOW later on the client ORB, the next new invocation on each bi-directional connection will also have to transmit the BiDirId for this new POA to the server side.

2. When the server receives a GIOP Request with BI_DIR_GIOP_OFFER service context, the server cannot dispatch the request to the target object implementation until this connection becomes bi-directional. Why? If the server dispatches the request before this connection becomes bi-directional, this request may fail because the target is not able to call back objects on the client ORB. In the case of Strong BiDirIds, the server may even have to send CHALLENGE and wait for RESPONSE before the server can dispatch the request.

If we put both implications together in the case of Strong BiDirIds, when someone creates a new POA with EXPORT policy ALLOW on a client ORB, a longer delay will be expected in the next request on every bi-directional connection because the server has to verify the BiDirId of this new POA no matter whether this new BiDirId will be used for callbacks on that connection or not. To me this overhead is not acceptable if it is the only way to implement bi-directional GIOP according to the spec. I hope the spec can be written in a way that allows efficient implementation, though efficiency is not always a concern for everyone.