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Distributed Computing Transcription

Welcome to our distributed computing module. Distributed computing is where we process data on different systems. When we have web users, they are never actually touching the database where the data is contained. Instead, we use common object request brokers, such as CORBA or ORB. Distributed communications standards such as the Component Object Model or the Distributed Component Object Model or Enterprise Java Bean are standards which define distributive computing.

SOAP, or the Simple Object Access Protocol, was designed to allow applications to exchange information over the Internet. However, there is a lack of security in the SOAP protocol. For the CISSP examination, you should remember that SOAP was designs to allow the exchange of information but that it lacks security.

CORBA, or the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is a platform independent middleware for solving client and server connectivity and interoperability problems. This standard was developed by the object management group and allows different applications that are written in different programming languages to communicate with each other. It provides a standard set of interfaces and APIs, or Application Program Interfaces, for systems to use to communicate with different object request brokers.

Microsoft's COM, or Component Object Model, is an architecture which allows simple interprocess communication to occur between objects. It will also allow objects on one system to communicate with each other. The Distributed Component Object Model, which was also developed by Microsoft, allows for COM inter-process communication in a distributed form.

It allows objects that are on different systems to interact with each other and works as a middleware for distributed processing among two or more systems. Object linking and embedding allows a single source of data to be shared for a particular object. It is based on COM and used frequently by Microsoft Office.

It allows object to be embedded into documents such as spreadsheets, pictures and graphics. Linking is the ability for one program to call another program and this provides the ability to place a piece of data inside a foreign program or document. And this is known as embedding. Microsoft's Active X technology also uses object linking and embedding.

It is platform specific and language independent. Active X controls can communicate with objects using COM services, which primarily occurs on the web. We can see an example at the bottom of the slide, where we have a webpage with an embedded object that uses Active X controls and DCOM to communicate with distributed objects that are stored in another location.

This concludes our distributed computing module. Thank you for watching.