TAO (software)

: For the gaming library, see Tao (software).

The ACE ORB (TAO) is a freely available, Open source, and standards-compliant real-time C plus plus implementation of CORBA based upon the Adaptive Communication Environment (ACE). It attempts to provide efficient, predictable, and scalable quality of service (QoS) end-to-end. Unlike conventional implementations of CORBA, which are inefficient, unpredictable, non-scalable, and often non-portable, TAO applies the best software practices and patterns to automate the delivery of high-performance and real-time QoS to distributed applications. TAO is for developers of distributed and embedded applications who have stringent performance demands.

Many types of real-time applications can benefit from the flexibility of the features provided by the TAO ORB and its CORBA services. In general, these applications require predictable timing characteristics and robustness since they are used in mission-critical real-time systems. Other real-time applications require low development cost and fast time to market.

Traditionally, the barrier to viable real-time CORBA has been that many real-time challenges are associated with end-to-end system design aspects that transcend the layering boundaries traditionally associated with CORBA. That s why TAO integrates the network interfaces, OS I/O subsystem, ORB, and middleware services in order to provide an end-to-end solution. For instance, consider the CORBA Event Service, which simplifies application software by supporting decoupled suppliers and consumers, asynchronous event delivery, and distributed group communication. TAO enhances the standard CORBA Event Service to provide important features, such as real-time event dispatching and scheduling, periodic event processing, efficient event filtering and correlation mechanisms, and multicast protocols required by real-time applications.

TAO can be downloaded from the Internet and freely used and redistributed without developer or run-time licensing costs. Commercial support, documentation, training, and consulting for TAO are available from multiple vendors. Many other third-party tools and services have also been integrated with TAO.

TAO has been ported to many operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, and Unix and Unix-like systems such as Solaris and Linux.

=See also=

*Adaptive Communication Environment *Component-Integrated ACE ORB *ZEN ORB

=External links=

*[http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO.html TAO™ Homepage] *[http://cvs.doc.wustl.edu The online cvs archive] *[http://deuce.doc.wustl.edu/bugzilla/index.cgi Bugzilla for ACE/TAO] *[http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/scoreboard The daily scoreboard] *[http://deuce.doc.wustl.edu/Download.html Download TAO] *[news:comp.soft-sys.ace Discussions]