Object-Oriented Security

It is not possible to see what is contained in the object because it is encapsulated.

Encapsulation can be used to protect the object, since it does not allow any other object to see data from outside. This makes sense from a security perspective because no object should be able to access or see another object's data.

The trend in computing over the last number of decades has been to move toward a new age of distributed computing. Distributed computing allows the sharing of resources.

The same concept of distributed environments can be applied in software development. Distributed development architectures allow applications to be divided into logical objects that are called components, and each component can exist in different locations.

The components can then communicate with each other, and programs can call the components as required.

This development architecture allows applications to download code from remote machines onto a user's local host in a manner that is seamless to the user. Applications today can be built using this distributed architecture constructed with software systems that are based on distributed objects.

Examples may include Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI), Sun's Jakarta Enterprise Beans (EJB), and Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM).

A distributed object-oriented system allows parts of the system to be located on separate computers within a network. The object system itself is a compilation of reusable self-contained objects of code designed to perform specific business functions.

Objects can communicate with each other, even though they may reside on different machines across the network.

To standardize this process, the Object Management Group (OMG) created a standard for finding objects, initiating objects, and sending requests to the objects. The standard is called the Object Request Broker (ORB), which is part of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) mentioned above.