Last week in Montreal the OMG Technical Committee voted to issue my CORBA Reflection proposal for comment. This proposal adds introspection capabilities to CORBA objects in a non-intrusive way, as I've previously explained.
I've proposed this addition using the OMG Request For Comments (RFC) process, not the Request For Proposal (RFP) process, mainly because I knew nobody else was working on anything like this, and to fast-track the work as much as possible. Overall, it's taken only nine months of standards work to get this issued, which in the standards world is very quick. I implemented this idea in Orbix 6 last summer, then published the idea in Doug Schmidt's and my "Object Interconnections" column in the C/C++ Users Journal (CUJ) last December. The proposal has been refined since then over the course of four OMG meetings, starting last November, mainly by simplifying the interface hierarchy and adding support for retrieving Interface Repository full interface description structs.
The proposal is now officially in its comment period, which lasts until October 6. Anyone, OMG member or not, may make a comment on the proposal by sending them to the OMG. All comments of substance on the proposal collected during that period will be vetted by the OMG Middleware and Related Services (MARS) Task Force to see if any constitutes a significant objection to adopting the proposal. If no such objections are received, the proposal then becomes part of the CORBA spec.