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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="latin1" ?>
+<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
+
+<chapter>
+  <header>
+    <copyright>
+      <year>1999</year><year>2009</year>
+      <holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
+    </copyright>
+    <legalnotice>
+      The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
+      Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
+      compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
+      Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
+      retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
+    
+      Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
+      basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
+      the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
+      under the License.
+    
+    </legalnotice>
+
+    <title>Introduction to Orber</title>
+    <prepared>Megan Lynch</prepared>
+    <docno></docno>
+    <date>1998-09-21</date>
+    <rev></rev>
+    <file>ch_introduction.xml</file>
+  </header>
+
+  <section>
+    <title>Overview</title>
+    <p>The Orber application is a CORBA compliant Object Request Brokers
+      (ORB), which provides CORBA functionality in an Erlang
+      environment. Essentially, the ORB channels communication or
+      transactions between nodes in a
+      heterogeneous environment.
+      </p>
+    <p><term id="CORBA"><termdef>Common Object Request Broker Architecture is a common communication standard developed by the OMG (Object Management Group)</termdef></term>(Common Object Request Broker
+      Architecture) provides an interface definition language  allowing
+      efficient system integration and also supplies standard
+      specifications for some services.
+      </p>
+    <p>The Orber application contains the following parts:</p>
+    <list type="bulleted">
+      <item>
+        <p>ORB kernel and IIOP support</p>
+      </item>
+      <item>
+        <p>Interface Repository</p>
+      </item>
+      <item>
+        <p>Interface Definition Language Mapping for Erlang</p>
+      </item>
+      <item>
+        <p>CosNaming Service</p>
+      </item>
+    </list>
+
+    <section>
+      <title>Benefits</title>
+      <p>Orber provides CORBA functionality in an Erlang environment that enables:
+        </p>
+      <list type="bulleted">
+        <item>
+          <p><em>Platform interoperability and transparency</em></p>
+          <p>Orber enables communication between
+            OTP applications or Erlang environment applications and
+            other platforms; for example,  Windows NT, Solaris
+            etc, allowing platform  transparency. This is especially helpful in situations where there
+            are many users with  different platforms.  For example,
+            booking airline tickets would require the airline database
+            and hundreds of travel agents (who may not have the same
+            platform) to book seats on flights. </p>
+        </item>
+        <item>
+          <p><em>Application level interoperability and transparency</em></p>
+          <p>As Orber is a CORBA compliant application, its purpose is
+            to provide interoperability and transparency on the application
+            level. 
+            Orber simplifies the distributed system software  by defining the
+            environment as  objects, which in effect, views
+            everything as identical regardless of programming
+            languages.            <br></br>
+ Previously, time-consuming programming was
+            required to facilitate communication between different languages.
+            However, with CORBA compliant Orber the Application
+            Programmer is relieved of this task. This makes 
+            communication on an application level relatively transparent to the user.</p>
+        </item>
+      </list>
+    </section>
+
+    <section>
+      <title>Purpose and Dependencies</title>
+      <p>The system architecture and OTP dependencies of Orber are illustrated in figure 1 below:</p>
+      <marker id="dependent"></marker>
+      <image file="dependent.gif">
+        <icaption>
+Figure 1: Orber Dependencies and Structure.</icaption>
+      </image>
+      <p>Orber  is dependent on  Mnesia (see the Mnesia
+        documentation) - an Erlang database management application
+        used to store object information.</p>
+      <note>
+        <p>Although Orber does not have a  run-time
+          application dependency to IC (an <term id="IDL"><termdef>Interface Definition Language - IDL is the OMG specified interface definition language, used to define the CORBA object interfaces.</termdef></term>compiler for
+          Erlang), it is necessary when building
+          services and applications.  See the IC documentation for
+          further details.</p>
+      </note>
+      <marker id="orbs"></marker>
+      <image file="orbs.gif">
+        <icaption>
+Figure 2: ORB interface between Java and Erlang Environment Nodes.</icaption>
+      </image>
+      <p>This simplified illustration in figure 2 demonstrates how Orber can facilitate communication in a heterogeneous environment. The Erlang Nodes running 
+        OTP and the other Node running applications written in Java  can
+        communicate via an <term id="ORB"><termdef>Object Request Broker - ORB open software bus architecture specified by the OMG which allows object components to communicate in a heterogeneous environment.</termdef></term>(Object Request Broker). Using
+        Orber means that CORBA functions can be used to achieve this
+        communication.
+        </p>
+      <p>For example, if one of the above nodes requests an object, it does not
+        need to know if that object is located on the same, or 
+        different, Erlang or Java nodes. The ORB will channel the
+        information creating platform and application transparency for
+        the user.
+        </p>
+    </section>
+
+    <section>
+      <title>Prerequisites</title>
+      <p>To fully understand the concepts presented in the
+        documentation, it is recommended that the user is familiar
+        with distributed programming and CORBA (Common Object Request
+        Broker Architecture).  
+        </p>
+      <p>Recommended reading includes <em>Open Telecom Platform Documentation Set</em> and <em>Concurrent Programming in Erlang</em>.
+        </p>
+    </section>
+  </section>
+</chapter>
+