Flyover: a technique for achieving high performance in CORBA-based systems with limited heterogeneity

Inter-operability in heterogeneous distributed systems is often provided with the help of CORBA compliant middleware. Many distributed object-computing systems, however, are characterised by limited heterogeneity. Such systems often contain a subset of components that are written in the same programming language and run on top of the same platform. Techniques that exploit such limited heterogeneity in systems for achieving high system performance are presented here. While components implemented using diverse programming languages and/or platform use a CORBA compliant middleware, the similar components can use a ‘Flyover’ that employs a separate path between the client and its server, and avoid a number of CORBA overheads. A prototype of a tool that is used for installing such flyovers in CORBA-based applications is implemented and is described. The performance of flyover-based systems is compared with those of pure CORBA-based systems that use commercial middleware products, under various workload and system parameters. A significantly large performance gain is achieved with the flyover for a range of workload parameters. Insights into system behaviour and performance developed from results of experiments with synthetic workload running on a network of PC’s are presented