defines the interface for creating bridges to other object models.
The created bridges are transparent to the user. That is, if one maps
an interface into the target model, then the resulting target interface
is a bridge implementation, that is not being noticed by an user. During
a call on that interface, the bridge is invoked to convert the arguments
and carry out a call according to the rules of the source model.
Return values are automatically mapped to the types of the target model.
Simple types are mapped to simple target types. That is, there is no additional
bridging code involved when those types are being used.
Sometimes a bridge cannot be created, depending on whether a programm uses
the XBridgeSupplier2 interface remotely. Assuming one wants to bridge an
OLE Automation object to UNO by calling createBridge on a proxy, then the UNO remote
bridge would not recognise that the Any argument contains an IDispatch interface.
Therefore it cannot marshal it as COM requires it and the bridgeing would fail.
To prevent this, implementations of this interface should be aware of this scenario and
if necessary take the appropriate steps. The process ID argument to the createBridge
function represents the calling process and may be used by the implementation to determine
if it is being accessed remotely.
All objects, whether they are part of the UNO object model or not,
are carried in an any. The representation of this object
is heavily model-dependent and has to be specified in the following list:
UNO:
The any carries normal UNO types, which can be any base type,
struct, sequence, enum or interface.
OLE:
The any carries an unsigned long (on 32-bit systems)
or an unsigned hyper (on 64-bit systems), which is
interpreted as a variant pointer. The any does not control the
lifetime of the represented variant. That implies that the caller
has the responsibility of freeing the OLE resources represented
by the any value.
JAVA:
not specified yet.
CORBA:
not specified yet.
Any implementation can supply its own bridges to other object
models by implementing this interface and returning the bridge
when the method createBridge()
is called with itself as the first parameter.
