Using Temporary Properties to Provide Leasing Functionality in CORBA

The use of dynamic properties in CORBA applications is supported by CORBA \´s Property Service. This service, however, does not support temporary properties with restricted lifetimes. In this paper, we describe an easy-to-use Enhanced Property Service (EPS) that provides the required additional functionality while being backwards compatible to the original Property Service. Furthermore, we point out an interesting application of that new service for CORBA applications that not only need properties but also require support of the concept of leasing. Leasing is well-known from business world contexts, but has been leveraged in the software engineering domain recently, e.g. in the architecture ofJini. Up to now, leasing has not found its way into the CORBA environment. We describe an approach to the realization of leasing in CORBA based on the use of temporary properties representing "leases". After a brief introduction to the leasing concept, we take a detailed look at the concept of properties in CORBA by reviewing CORBA\´s Property Service, pointing out its disadvantages, and discussing the extensions to the Property Service mentioned above. The paper concludes with basic considerations concerning the question how the EPS could be used to implement leasing in CORBA