The Community OpenORB - ManagementBoard

Managing an Object Request Broker like OpenORB and its services require CORBA experience and in-depth knowledge of the Object Management Group specifications. The Management Board provides a simple to use but powerful application for both user-view and developer-view OpenORB management. It interacts with the ORB core and the services for testing and configuring purposes. Furthermore, the Management Board is an open architecture which enables adding, modifying and removing plugins. A plugin is like a module which is developed for a particular purpose. The Board is provided with two built-in plugins, the first for configuring the OpenORB environment and the second for displaying help. Additional plugins are provided to manage services like the Naming Service or the Interface Repository.

You need the OpenORB distribution to run the Management Board. You also need two other libraries that are located in the lib directory, jhall.jar and jlfgr-1_0.jar.

The Management Board is provided with a build script for the Ant tool. This tool is available in the OpenORB distribution inside the lib directory. So, to compile the Board, you just have to start the build script corresponding to your Operating System: build.bat for Windows or build.sh for Unix.

The Management Board lib directory contains two bundled extension jar files which are required. The main archive openorb_board-{version}.jar is generated in the dist directory.

In order to complete the installation, you should make sure that the following archives are added to your classpath. You need the openorb-{version}.jar archive and all the archives located under the OpenORB lib directory.

This chapter explains how to configure the Management Board.

When using OpenORB, its configuration and all its services information are located in the OpenORB.xml file. This file should be present in either the current directory where you execute your application, your user home directory or your java home directory. We advise you to maintain only one OpenORB.xml file in your system. For more information, you can consult your OpenORB user guide.

The board.xml is provided in the src/config directory of your OpenORB Management Board distribution. You should copy the content of the file into the OpenORB.xml file. Once this is done, save the OpenORB.xml file.

To start the Management Board, type: java org.openorb.board.Board The Management Board will then launch and you can start using it.

            <module name="board">
            
            <property name="boardProfile" value="basic"/>
            <property name="basicProfile" value="config,help" />
            
            <property name="componentFactory" value="org.openorb.board.factory.DefaultComponentFactory" />
            <property name="resourceFactory" value="org.openorb.board.factory.DefaultResourceFactory"/>
            <property name="tracesLevel" value="normal" />
            <property name="tracesFile" value="" />
            
            <property name="configPluginClass" value="org.openorb.board.plugins.cfg.Plugin" />
            <property name="configPluginPath" value="" />
            <property name="configPluginHelp" value="" />
            
            </module>
            

The property boardProfile identifies a profile for using the Management Board. A profile is a set of plugins loaded at startup. When specifying a profile name in boardProfile, one corresponding xxxProfile property must exist. For example, when using a profile named "basic", the boardProfile property value is "basic", and the profile property named "basicProfile" must exist.

Each profile property value is an enumeration of the plugins being provided by this profile. A plugin entry in the OpenORB.xml file is made of three properties. Where "foo" would be a plugin name, these properties will be named "fooPluginClass", "fooPluginPath" and "fooPluginHelp".

The property "fooPluginClass" specifies the plugin's main class that will be executed by the Board.

The property "fooPluginPath" indicates a path or jar archive for retrieving the plugin classes and resources.

The property "fooPluginHelp" specifies an HelpSet help collection as described by the JavaHelp framework. These HelpSet will be generated and packaged within the plugin distribution.

The componentFactory specifies the class used to create the GUI components. Unless you want to customize the Management Board appearance, you should leave that property with its default value.

The resourceFactory specifies the class used to retrieve resources like icons and messages. Unless you want to customize or localize the Management Board, you should leave that property with its default value.

The traceLevel indicates the level of traces when using the Board. Correct values are none, normal and debug. The debug displays the maximum amount of traces.

The traceFile indicates if the traces should be saved in a file. The file name is given as the property value.