SCIENCE & ENGINEERING NEWS
Needham, MASS. — Several member companies of the Object Management Group (OMG), a not-for-profit international software consortium, announced the organization’s intent to standardize a Language Mapping from OMG Interface Definition Language (OMG IDL, currently an ISO and ITU-T International Standard) to C##, Microsoft’s newly proposed development language. This mapping will work with the other OMG language mappings to allow applications written in C## to interoperate seamlessly via CORBA (the OMG’s Common Object Request Broker Architecture) with existing business applications written in C, C++, Java, COBOL, Ada, Lisp, Smalltalk, Python, and IDLscript. Because there are currently very few applications written in C##, early development efforts in this new language will have to interoperate with existing applications in other languages.
The Request for Proposal (RFP) is being initiated in response to the need for OMG members and their customers to ensure complete interoperability between current CORBA-enabled applications and new technologies being developed by various companies, including Microsoft.
“As a company that has developed applications using C##, SOAP and CORBA, we feel it’s important for the OMG to undertake this RFP to investigate the benefits of both a C## CORBA mapping and interfaces to allow SOAP and CORBA to work together,” said Bob Marcus, chief technical officer of Rogue Wave Software, an OMG member company. “One of the advantages of working with OMG’s technologies, and what many of our customers expect us to provide, are solutions that work regardless of platform or language, whether 20 years old or invented next year.”
“As a leading provider of enterprise portal solutions for Global 2000 organizations, IONA will continue to provide best-in-class integration of Microsoft environments with the wider enterprise,” stated Barry Morris, CEO of IONA. “The .NET and C## vision is about loosely-coupled service-based architectures, a vision which is increasingly convergent with the OMG CORBA specification and the IONA iPortal suite. IONA welcomes the OMG C## initiative in support of seamlessly integrating C##, SOAP and .NET with EJB/J2EE, XML, COM+, IMS, CICS and other popular environments.”
The RFP is expected to be issued at the group’s Technical Meeting Week in Burlingame, Calif., Sept. 11-15, 2000. Under the OMG’s open, vendor-neutral process, any OMG member may respond to the RFP. For more information on membership or on attending the Burlingame meeting, please email [email protected].
With the support of its membership of software vendors, software developers and end users, the OMG’s CORBA is “The Middleware That’s Everywhere.” Since 1989, the OMG has been “Setting The Standards For Distributed Computing” through its mission to promote the theory and practice of object technology for the development of distributed computing systems. The goal is to provide a common architectural framework for object-oriented applications based on widely available interface specifications. The OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA and has international marketing offices in Bahrain, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan and the UK, along with a U.S. government representative in Washington, DC, USA.
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