An Interoperable Federated Naming Service Supporting a Pan-European Service Platform

This paper describes the implementation of a Federated Naming Service required for a widely distributed multi-ORB heterogeneous platform. This platform is being built to demonstrate and test the applicability of CORBA technology and TINA principles to support Telecommunication Public Network Operators (PNOs) in their attempt to open their interfaces to third party service providers. The introduction of a Naming Service requires the definition of a naming hierarchy and configuration of ORBs to interwork with the Naming Service. A distribution strategy for the Naming Service in the ESP was devised to minimise the cost of name look ups and to increase reliability of the platform. The support for federation of Naming Services i.e. interoperability of existing Naming Services is assessed. A federated Naming Service is the primary bootstrapping mechanism that enables the application objects throughout Europe to find each other. Unfortunately, the interworking between the available Naming Service implementations can not be achieve due to difference in Repository Ids. without further extensions to the Naming Services.