Object Request Broker service settings in administrative console

Use this page to configure the Java Object Request Broker (ORB) service.

To view this administrative console page, click Servers > Application Servers > serverName > ORB Service.

Several settings are available for controlling internal Object Request Broker (ORB) processing. You can use these settings to improve application performance in the case of applications containing enterprise beans. You can make changes to these settings for the default server or any application server configured in the administrative domain.

Configuration tab

Request timeout  
Specifies the number of seconds to wait before timing out on a request message.

For use in command-line scripting, the full name of this system property is com.ibm.CORBA.RequestTimeout.

Data type int
Units Seconds
Default 180
Range 0 to 300
Request retries count  
Specifies the number of times that the ORB attempts to send a request if a server fails. Retrying sometimes enables recovery from transient network failures.

For use in command-line scripting, the full name of this system property is com.ibm.CORBA.requestRetriesCount.

Data type int
Default 1
Range 1 to 10
Request retries delay  
Specifies the number of milliseconds between request retries.

For use in command-line scripting, the full name of this system property is com.ibm.CORBA.requestRetriesDelay.

Data type int
Units Milliseconds
Default 0
Range 0 to 60
Connection cache maximum  
Specifies the maximum number of entries that can occupy the ORB connection cache before the ORB starts to remove inactive connections from the cache. It is possible that the number of active connections in the cache will temporarily exceed this threshold value. If necessary, the ORB will continue to add connections as long as it has resources are available.

For use in command-line scripting, the full name of this system property is com.ibm.CORBA.MaxOpenConnections.

Data type Integer
Units Connections
Default 240
Range 10 - largest integer recognized by Java
Connection cache minimum  
Specifies the minimum number of entries in the ORB connection cache. The ORB will not remove inactive connections when the number of entries is below this value.

For use in command-line scripting, the full name of this system property is com.ibm.CORBA.MinOpenConnections.

Data type Integer
Units Connections
Default 100
Range Any integer that is at least 5 less than the value specified for the Connection cache maximum property.
ORB tracing  
Enables the tracing of ORB GIOP messages.

This setting affects two system properties: com.ibm.CORBA.Debug and com.ibm.CORBA.CommTrace. If you set these properties through command-line scripting, you must set both to true in order to enable the tracing of GIOP messages.

Data type Boolean
Default Not enabled (false)
Locate request timeout  
Specifies the number of seconds to wait before timing out on a LocateRequest message.

For use in command-line scripting, the full name of this system property is com.ibm.CORBA.LocateRequestTimeout.

Data type int
Units Seconds
Default 180
Range 0 to 300
Force tunneling  
Controls how the client ORB attempts to use HTTP tunneling.

For direct access, the full name of this property is com.ibm.CORBA.ForceTunnel.

Data type String
Default NEVER if you are running an application server

WHENREQUIRED if you are not running an application server

Range Valid values are ALWAYS, NEVER, or WHENREQUIRED.

Additional information about valid values follows:

ALWAYS
Use HTTP tunneling immediately, without trying TCP connections first.
NEVER
Disable HTTP tunneling. If a TCP connection fails, a CORBA system exception (COMM_FAILURE) is thrown.
WHENREQUIRED
Use HTTP tunneling if TCP connections fail.

Tunnel agent URL  
Specifies the URL of the servlet used to support HTTP tunneling.

This must be a properly formed URL, such as http://w3.mycorp.com:81/servlet/com.ibm.CORBA.services.IIOPTunnelServlet or, for applets, http://applethost:port/servlet/com.ibm.CORBA.services.IIOPTunnelServlet. This field is required if HTTP tunneling is set.

For use in command-line scripting, the full name of this system property is com.ibm.CORBA.TunnelAgentURL.

Pass by reference  
Specifies how the ORB passes parameters. If enabled, the ORB passes parameters by reference instead of by value, which avoids making an object copy. If you do not enable pass by reference, the parameters are copied to the stack before every remote method call is made, which can be expensive.

You can use this option only when the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) client and the EJB are on the same classloader. This requirement means that the EJB client and the EJB must be deployed in the same EAR file.

If the EJB client and the EJB server are installed in the same WebSphere Application Server instance, and the client and server use remote interfaces, enabling Pass by reference can improve performance up to 50%. Pass by reference helps performance only where non-primitive object types are passed as parameters. Therefore, int and floats are always copied, regardless of the call model.

Enable this property with caution, because unexpected behavior can occur. If an object reference is modified by the remote method, the caller might change.

For use in command line scripting, the full name of this system property is com.ibm.CORBA.iiop.noLocalCopies.

Data type Boolean
Default Not enabled (false)

The use of this option for enterprise beans with remote interfaces violates the EJB Specification, Version 2.0 (see section 5.4). Object references passed to EJB methods or to EJB home methods are not copied and can be subject to corruption.

Consider the following example:

Iterator iterator = collection.iterator();
MyPrimaryKey pk = new MyPrimaryKey();
while (iterator.hasNext()) {
   pk.id = (String) iterator.next();
   MyEJB myEJB = myEJBHome.findByPrimaryKey(pk);
}

In this example, a reference to the same MyPrimaryKey object passes into WebSphere Application Server with a different ID value each time. Running this code with Pass by reference enabled causes a problem within the application server because multiple enterprise beans are referencing the same MyPrimaryKey object. To avoid this problem, set the system property com.ibm.websphere.ejbcontainer.allowPrimaryKeyMutation to true when Pass by reference is enabled. Setting Pass by reference to true causes the EJB container to make a local copy of the PrimaryKey object. As a result, however, a small portion of the performance advantage of setting Pass by reference is lost.

As a general rule, any application code that passes an object reference as a parameter to an enterprise bean method or EJB home method must be scrutinized to determine if passing that object reference results in loss of data integrity or other problems.


Related tasks
Managing Object Request Brokers
Related reference
Administrative console buttons
Thread pool settings
Object Request Broker communications trace
Object Request Brokers: Resources for learning



Searchable topic ID:   uorbsetg
Last updated: Jun 21, 2007 8:07:48 PM CDT    WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation, Version 5.0.2
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