NeXT Computer Inc says that it will develop Common Object Request Broker Architecture 2.0 compatibility in Portable Distributed Objects 4.0, the latest version of the object engine and request broker at the heart of OpenStep, the evolution of NeXTstep. The company is currently extending Portable Distributed Objects’ bridge mechanism with the aim of providing seamless interoperability between OpenStep, Object Linking & Embedding/Common Object Model and Common Object Request Broker Architecture objects. PDO 4.0 is due in the second half of next year. It has already been stripped out of NeXTstep to run under Solaris, HP-UX and Digital Unix and will also go up under Windows NT from next quarter as D’OLE – Distributed Object Linking & Embedding for Windows – with a Windows95 release to follow. The company said it will provide communication between OpenStep and Object Linking & Embedding objects. Enterprise Object Framework for Windows 1.1 goes up at the same time. The first release of its next-generation environment, OpenStep for Mach 4.0, is due in the first quarter of next year; and OpenStep for Windows 4.0 will follow in mid-1996.
