The IIOP Tracer offers an easy way to monitor CORBA/IIOP messages on a network.

Due to its modular architecture, the Tracer is useful in various contexts, e.g. for debugging purposes or management of distributed applications. Unlike other methods, it does not require any instrumentation of the monitored applications in advance.

The IIOP Tracer consists of two autonomous processes:

• Sniffer - The Sniffer reads all data packets from the network, identifies IIOP messages and sends them to the TraceServer.

• TraceServer - The TraceServer accepts IIOP messages from the Sniffer and processes them. The processing details can be customized according to the needs of the user.

For a complete decoding, the TraceServer needs the IDL specifications of the messages to be decoded. Access to this information is encapsulated by Frontends. Currently, the IIOP tracer is equipped with Frontends for the usage of an Interface Repository and direct access to IDL files.

The data gathered from the network is transformed into a generic structure in order to prepare it for further processing by different Backends. At the moment, two backends are available. One formats accumulated data line-by-line, another does a complete, formatted output of the data to a log file.

The integration of new Front- or Backends is quite simple, which makes the IIOP Tracer easily adaptable to new tasks or an existing management solution. Despite its flexibility, the interfaces of the Tracer are kept generic to minimize restrictions of its applicability.