Difference between RMI and CORBA

Last Updated : 01 Oct, 2024

In distributed computing two well-known technologies to communicate objects in different systems are Remote Method Invocation (RMI) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). As stated above, both RMI and CORBA facilitate communication between remote objects, but they do it in different ways, do it supported by different languages and use different architecture. In this article we will see difference between RMI and CORBA in detail.

What is RMI?

Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is a Java specific, technology that allows objects of different JVMs to communicate with each other. RMI applications have two components: the server and the client. The server deploys the remote objects and then simply awaits calls made on these objects from the client. Instead, the client derives remote references to the objects of the server and works with them.

Advantages of RMI

Seamless integration with Java: RMI is a Java native technology and as such it can quite easily to be implemented in Java applications.
Automatic garbage collection: The objects of RMI are easily collected for garbage collection by the JVMs hence they do not require memory collection by programmers.
Dynamic class loading: The independent classes downloading offer flexibility because a client is able to get new classes from a remote JVM via RMI.

Disadvantages of RMI

Java-dependent: RMI is supported only by Java which makes it unfit for systems that implemented with different languages.
Tight coupling with JVM: It depends heavily on JVM which in turn makes it less integrated with other platform.

The RMI consists of three layers

Stub/Skeleton layer
Remote Reference layer
Transport layer

The relationship among these layers is as shown in the following figure :

What is CORBA?

Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a middleware that was designed to enable free flowing communication of objects that are distributed regardless of the underlying platforms, programming language or the OS. As the name suggests it is sometimes called a ‘software bus,’ that is, a communications framework that enables objects in different environments to find each other and communicate.

CORBA utilize an Interface Definition Language (IDL), which byte is employed to separate interfaces from the implementation code. Another example is that it can be implemented in various platforms including C++, Python and java hence improving its interoperation.

Advantages of CORBA

Language independence: One more advantage of CORBA is that it can be written in different programming languages, whereas only distinction with Hispanic is that CORBA is developed for different types of systems.
Platform independence: Virtual machines obtained with the help of the CORBA environment can be easily installed on different operating systems and computer architectures without adding or erasing anything.
Strong security features: Security is one of the important aspects; CORBA, at the same time, provides numerous opportunities to secure communications, which are often exceedingly important in distributed ones.

Disadvantages of CORBA

No automatic garbage collection: CORBA does not facilitate automatic garbage collection which in turn results in some problems with respect to memory management.
Complex implementation: CORBA has been said to have more conceptual overhead than RMI, that is, it takes more effort to set up and manage CORBA than it does for RMI.