The Object Management Architecture (OMA)

OMA is a high-level vision of a complete distributed environment. It consists of four components that can be roughly divided into two parts: system oriented components (Object Request Brokers and Object Services), and application oriented components (Application Objects and Common Facilities).

Of these parts Object Request Broker is the one which constitutes the foundation of OMA and manages all communication between its components. It allows objects to interact in a heterogeneous, distributed environment, independent of the platforms on which these objects reside and techniques used to implement them. In performing its task it relies on Object Services which are responsible for general object management such as creating objects, access control, keeping track of relocated objects, etc. Common Facilities and Application Objects are the components closest to the end user, and in their functions they invoke services of the system components.