Corba - Unique user ID

Question

Writing a simple multi client <-> server system in Corba.

I am stuck on unique identification of the client. Is there a mechanism in Corba, like some POA policy that would allow a unique user id to be generated by the server and carried along with all that clients communication.

Basically I have the system setup so I manually do this unique user ID. Client connects, server generates a key which is sent to the client and stored on both ends. A similar setup that you might employ in many environments. What I am asking is if Corba has its own mechanism for this that I can leverage.

Answer 1

CORBA doesn't have any inbuilt client ID mechanism that you can use, unfortunately. The main reason why CORBA never specified it is because it's difficult to define what a "client" really is: is it a process or a thread? Is it an entire tier or a single application instance? What about clients in the same process as the server? In addition, certain developers might want different behavior spanning any of those options.

Personally, I think that your approach of having the server dictate an ID for the client is fine, but keep in mind that it's basically a "session ID" approach, and that can be tough to scale horizontally. Make sure that you absolutely, positively need to ID your clients, because something as simple as client authentication via IIOP/TLS might not do the trick just fine.