Pure CORBA

Introduction to the any Type

The any type is a built-in CORBA data type that can be used as a parameter or return value of an IDL operation. It can also be nested inside other data types; for example, you could have a sequence of anys, a struct containing an any, or even an any containing an any. The following IDL fragment shows an example of its use:

//IDL
typedef sequence<any> AnySeq;

interface BlobStack {
    readonly attribute size;
    void push(in any blob);
    void pop(out any blob);
    void popNBlobs(in long n, out AnySeq blobs);
};

The BlobStack interface describes a stack whose elements can be of arbitrary type. Elements of the stack are added and removed using push() and pop(), respectively. The popNBlobs() operation returns an out parameter of ...