As promised a year ago (CI No 2,335), Digital Equipment Corp is preparing a new implementation of its ObjectBroker, which will go into beta test this summer, and is being designed to enable developers to target Object Management Group Common Object Request Broker Architecture environments, or the Common Object Model world characterised by Microsoft Corp’s Object Linking & Embedding. Application programming interfaces will reveal underlying communications protocols, enabling ObjectBroker and Object Linking & Embedding to make common calls – essentially Distributed Computing Environment Remote Procedure Calls with added functionality, and a bridge mechanism will enable objects in one environment to be accessed and encapsulated from the other, and vice versa. The bridge is the basis of a Common Object Request Broker Architecture-to-Common Object Model interoperability mechanism proposed by DEC, Microsoft and Candle Corp, and now also supported by Computer Associates International Inc and maybe fellow Distributed Computing Environment-traveller Hewlett-Packard Co too. The issue is expected to be addressed by an Object Group request for proposals at its meeting in Cambridge, UK this week. DEC envisages developers targetting desktop database client applications using Common Object Model and using Common Object Request Broker Architecture Object Request Brokers for transactional applications. DEC remains firmly committed to its Distributed Computing Environment-based Object Request Broker imple mentation in ObjectBroker and says it has no plans to offer the Object Management Group’s Inter-Object Request Broker Protocol for CORBA 2 Object Request Broker-to-Object Broker interoperability, because no-one has asked for it.
