Federation management for the OMG-trader

Interworking traders allow their clients' requests and their servers' advertisements to go across the boundaries of trading communities. Interworking is accomplished via trader links. The OMG (Object Management Group) and the ISO ODP (Open Distributed Processing) Committee have published a paper (OMG RFP5 Submission, "Trading Object Service", OMG Document orbos/96-06-07) which specifies asymmetrical links for trader interworking. Symmetrical links, however, provide more quality of service than asymmetrical links, and thus facilitate trader interworking significantly. This paper discusses both symmetrical and asymmetrical links and presents a federation manager which solves most of the problems caused by asymmetrical links.