Preface

About the Object Management Group

OMG

Founded in 1989, the Object Management Group, Inc. (OMG) is an open membership, not-for-profit computer industry standards consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications for interoperable, portable and reusable enterprise applications in distributed, heterogeneous environments. Membership includes Information Technology vendors, end users, government agencies and academia.

OMG member companies write, adopt, and maintain its specifications following a mature, open process. OMG's specifications implement the Model Driven Architecture® (MDA®), maximizing ROI through a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration that covers multiple operating systems, programming languages, middleware and networking infrastructures, and software development environments. OMG's specifications include: UML® (Unified Modeling Language?); CORBA® (Common Object Request Broker Architecture); CWM? (Common Warehouse Metamodel); and industry-specific standards for dozens of vertical markets.

More information on the OMG is available at http://www.omg.org/ .

OMG Specifications

As noted, OMG specifications address middleware, modeling and vertical domain frameworks. A catalog of all OMG Specifications Catalog is available from the OMG website at:

http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/spec_catalog.htm

Specifications within the Catalog are organized by the following categories:

OMG Modeling Specifications

OMG Middleware Specifications

Platform Specific Model and Interface Specifications

All of OMG's formal specifications may be downloaded without charge from our website. (Products implementing OMG specifications are available from individual suppliers.) Copies of specifications, available in PostScript and PDF format, may be obtained from the Specifications Catalog cited above or by contacting the Object Management Group, Inc. at:

 

OMG Headquarters

140 Kendrick Street

Building A, Suite 300

Needham, MA 02494

USA

Tel: +1-781-444-0404

Fax: +1-781-444-0320

Email: pubs@omg.org

Certain OMG specifications are also available as ISO standards. Please consult http://www.iso.org

Typographical Conventions

The type styles shown below are used in this document to distinguish programming statements from ordinary English. However, these conventions are not used in tables or section headings where no distinction is necessary.

Times/Times New Roman - 10 pt.: Standard body text

Helvetica/Arial - 10 pt. Bold: OMG Interface Definition Language (OMG IDL) and syntax elements.

Courier - 10 pt. Bold: Programming language elements.

Helvetica/Arial - 10 pt : Exceptions

Issues

The reader is encouraged to report any technical or editing issues/problems with this specification to http://www.omg.org/technology/agreement.htm .