The goal of an ORB Walker is to apply the search engine model to the problem of identifying candidate components for integration into a system. Until recently, surfing was a typical approach for finding information on the Web. Surfing is unstructured and serendipitous browsing. Search engines enable information published on the Web to be searched and discovered more effectively. Search engines use indexes that are automatically compiled by computer programs, such as robots and spiders that go out over the Internet to discover and collect Internet resources.
Searchers can connect to a search engine site and enter keywords to query the index.
Web pages and other Internet resources that satisfy the query are identified and listed. Similarly, the Internet can be used to provide the infrastructure for maintaining a world-wide component repository where software components do not reside in a centralized reuse repository, as in traditional models, but are maintained as active servers at the vendor's site. This eliminates the problems associated with maintaining a centralized repository and associated access issues. Components are updated directly by the vendor when new versions become available, or additional transitional services are brought on line. In place of traditional, costly indexing schemes, the ORB Walker automatically compiles indexes by going out over the Internet and discovering and collecting information about software components.