The Object Management Group to set a standard object model for object databases
There is a lot more happening at the Object Management Group nowadays than the determination of a standard object request broker. Some members are more excited about developments taking place within the object model task force. These members, predominantly active in the nascent object database industry, dismiss the object request broker as a kind of early communications protocol sitting under the file system – a remote procedure call. The real work, they claim, is to build an object model for databases that supports a whole new generation of object applications. In essence the object request broker supports existing applications by encapsulating them in wrappers. This means it necessarily deals with large objects, such as whole word processing packages. However, in the brave new world of object-oriented technology there will be a need for passing and managing small objects such as paragraphs, sentences, words and characters within word processing packages, and this is where the need for an object model comes in. This is one of the main reasons why NCR Corp partnered with the object database company Object Design Inc when making its submission for the object request broker. Together the two will be able to cater for both existing and new applications, large and small objects. A winning technical submission will not emerge from the object model task force, rather all members will hammer out an object model that the majority can live with. The products of sponsoring companies will conform to the object model finally accepted by the Object Group’s Technical Committee. IBM Corp has reportedly shown some impressive technology to this task force and some sources say several third-party relational vendors have guested, others – object database vendors – say that only Informix Software Inc has ever attended a meeting. The discrepancy may arise from official and unofficial appearances, as Informix is the only relational vendor that has officially belonged to the Object Group for any significant period of time. A final vote on the object model is scheduled for November and when that happens there will be a solid, recognised standard from which the object database market can finally take off.
BLOBs are no answer, what the world needs now is object databases
Assuming that a standard object model will help propel object databases into serious commercial use, what are they good for? Tom Atwood, president of Burlington, Massachusetts-based Object Design is of the opinion that object databases are ideal for any data that is non-recordised – in other words text, graphics, speech or video. At this point the relational rejoinder is always BLOBs, that is Binary Large Objects that can be used to store such data in relational databases. But according to Atwood, BLOBs only work for a scanned image with no internal structure as the in-memory data structure has to be flattened into a linear representation so that it can be stored on disk between executions of the application. For this reason Atwood claims that relational databases will never be adequate for office information, engineering design, CASE design, documents, spreadsheets and presentation design. Indeed, any area that has high, interactive performance requirements and uses shared, collaborative, non-record-oriented data. That is not to say that Atwood expects relational database users to jump across to object databases, he expects there to be co-existence for some time as the relational vendors dominate areas like central payroll and accounting where IMS and DB2 are snug on the mainframe. The object database market will grow to meet increasing departmental office information needs, making requests of the data held on the mainframe to bring it into desktop applications. The interface between these two environments will be a standard object SQL, which will be able to retrieve objects from a relational database. Atwood thinks the third-party relational vendors can’t move fast enough into object technolog
y because of the economics of their user base. To his knowledge Oracle Corp has no funded project to get a database started, the Ingres Corp Object Manager add-on he compared to a motor-bike with a sidecar. More serious contenders could come from workstation vendors – both IBM and Digital Equipment Corp are prototyping object databases, while Hewlett-Packard Co is already engineering its Iris object database.
Sequent to take Versant, ParcPlace object technology to commercial users
Object-oriented development has reached into the multi-processing Unix world courtesy of Sequent Computer Systems Inc, ParcPlace Systems Inc, Mountain View, California and Versant Object Technology Inc of Menlo Park. The trio has come together to offer users an object-oriented environment for developing commercial transaction processing and design automation applications. Under the agreement Versant will implement its database and ParcPlace its Objectworks/Smalltalk Release 4 development system on the Symmetry 2000 Series running Dynix/ptx. The deal calls for joint research and development to provide Sequent users with increased database performance, robust and rapid prototyping and code reuse, with advanced graphical user interface capabilities and the ability to integrate with existing database technology. Between them, the three will be targetting the following areas: computer-integrated manufacturing, network and systems management and bond and currency trading. A related but separate agreement has also been signed between Versant and EDS Performance Services Division for the two to jointly provide object technology support services. This is crucial to Versant, which, being a relatively small company, needed help in supporting the expected growth in users following the Sequent deal. EDS is also reported to be negotiating a similar deal with ParcPlace.
IBM RS/6000 partner Servio Corp brings the object database to Apple Mac users
The object database is also moving into the Apple Computer Inc Mac world courtesy of IBM Business Partner Servio Corp, Alameda, California, which has announced object database access for Macintosh C applications written using Symantec’s Think C development environment. New and existing Macintosh client applications written in Think C can now access objects stored in the Gemstone object server. GemStone can support C, C++ and Smalltalk transparently while the GemStone C Interface consists of a library of C functions enabling C calls such as Ada, Cobol, Pascal, Fortran, Lisp and Objective C.
