Today, as part of the Marshaller Work Package of COBIA Phase III development project, CO-LaN Management Board has received notification by the Methods & Tools Special Interest Group that the interface design phase for COBIA marshallers has been reviewed and assessed as completed. The proposed design is targeted to work under the potential scenarios envisioned for marshalling, including in-process marshalling, out-of-process marshalling on the same machine, and on a remote machine, through connection between proxy objects on both the PME and PMC side of the marshalled objects.
The interface and communication design is described in an internal specification document. The interface definitions have been simultaneously expressed in a COBIA Interface Definition Language format, suitable for input to automatic code generators developed within the COBIA project.
CO-LaN Management Board has taken this review under consideration and approved that the interface design phase of marshalling is completed.
The Methods & Tools Special Interest Group has also recommended the launch of the implementation of a COBIA out-of-process marshaller that covers the most generic marshalling and communication scenario. As a demonstration of the generic marshaller, the Methods &Tools Special Interest Group recommended use of the test Process Modelling Environment (PME) and of the Ideal Thermodynamics Package PMC developed during COBIA Phase I for proof-of-concept of interoperability between COM-based and COBIA-based applications. The demonstration should include interoperability between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of both the PME and the Ideal Thermodynamics Package. The generic marshaller implementation will demonstrate out-of-process marshalling using a TCP/IP connection between PME and PMC on the same machine.
CO-LaN Management Board has taken this recommendation under consideration and approved the launch of the implementation phase as defined by the Methods & Tools Special Interest Group. Consequently a work order has been issued to AmsterCHEM (contracted for COBIA Phase III) with a timeline that should lead the generic marshaller to be demonstrated at the CAPE-OPEN 2021 Annual Meeting.