Unix Labs, UK Defence Agency gear to break the deadlock and get the Format widely used…
Initiatives designed to break the deadlock which has so far prevented widespread industry acceptance and adoption of Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format technology will soon begin to gather what supporters of the environment hope, will prove to be irreversible momentum. The efforts, backed by the Format originator, the UK Defence Research Agency, will attack the problem from a number of angles. It hinges, in part, on re-positioning the Format as a complete conversion environment for producing binary code and as a mechanism for checking adherence to application programming interfaces as well as its use in its conceived role as a ground-breaking way of enabling software vendors to write, package and distribute one single version of an application to run unchanged on laptops, workstations, servers, mainframes, even supercomputers.
…Unix Labs mounts software vendor programme…
Unix System Laboratories Inc has now formally licensed the Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format from the Defence Research Agency, giving it the right to bundle ANDF installers with its products, including OEM deliveries, at no extra charge, and create a portability compiler for Unix System V.4 based upon the Defence Research Agency’s ANSI C compiler. Unix Labs hopes to lever ANDF into the industry by taking more than one approach. On the one hand – although it offers no time-scales Unix Labs is expected to begin bundling ANDF installers with its Unix operating system product. When suppliers catch up with the release, system vendors, integrators and customers will be the recipients of technology by default if not by desire. On the other hand, Unix Labs will shortly unveil alpha test versions of its Architecture-Neutral technology as part of a programme aimed at winning the hearts and minds of independent software vendors. Unix Labs will demonstrate to independent software vendors how Achitecture-Neutral Distribution Format technology can facilitate the creation of different binary version of an application or produce a single version of it which could be distributed across different systems. Unix Labs won’t name names, but claims to have a list of willing independent software vendors. Indeed, Unix Labs itself could create an inherently portable version of Unix using the same techniques, if enough vendors endorsed the Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format concept. ANDF is not on Novell Inc’s critical path for Unix Labs – important but not urgent is how one commentator described the new parent’s commitment – but Novell is understood to be very interested in how ANDF could be used to distribute NetWare and NetWare applications across heterogeneous networks.
…and it many check for compliance
A by-product of the Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format that’s being talked up as a Common Open Software Environment application compliance-checker, is its ability meticulously to examine code against a specification, such as an application programming interface. The UK Defence Research Agency says that if COSE and the unified Unix effort succeeds, then ANDF could be used to enforce it in a way that no other technology can. Indeed, Unix Labs’s Architecture-Neutral Distribution work has already exposed several problems that it has been able to feed back into COSE’s effort.
ANDF gains ground in new Esprit standards initiative…
As well as finding favour in the supply side of the industry, the Architecture Neutral Distribution Format technology is fast making friends in Europe, where the European Commission’s Esprit technology initiative has already provided money under a project called Glue to encourage the development of new ANDF producers and installers. A second initiative, intended to push ANDF technology out into use, is still under wraps, but is understood to include the funding of three independent software vendors, plus ANDF developer the UK’s Defence Research Agency (the Defence Research Agency) to establish some preliminary ANDF specificati
ons that could eventually be offered to groups like X/Open Co, the IEEE and National Institute for Standards & Technology for use as open systems standards. In the meantime, the specifications could be used alongside established standards to allow government, defence and other large information technology procurers to exercise a much greater degree of control over their suppliers, by separating hardware and software purchasing considerations. Moreover with the bulk of commercial users’ resources for new software spent on in-house or custom development projects, observers say that stable Architecture-Neutral Distribution technologies would enable them to create a single version of an application on a server to download on to a heterogeneous network of systems without having to create multiple source trees.
…as UK agency studies viability of ANDF buisness
When the Open Software Foundation revealed the Defence Research Agency’s Ten15 as the winning submission to its Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format technology request for technology back in 1991, the Defence Research Agency said it wasn’t in it for the money. However the UK Ministry of Defence agency has now engaged a manager to investigate the long-term viability of building a commercial business from the Format, including support and maintenance of users, the development of tools, installers and compilers. The Defence Research Agency reckons it is now funding only 25% of the overall ANDF effort and has 19 engineers working on the project. The Open Software Foundation has eight. The Defence Research Agency is reported to have a new ANDF portability kit up its sleeve, and says there are now product-quality ANDF installers available for Intel Corp 80386 and 80486 systems running Unix System V.4.2 and Santa Cruz Unix, with Solaris on Sparc and ICL Plc Unix System V.4.2 on Sparc versions coming. Other versions already complete include those for Ultrix on R-series RISC – a Unix System V.4.2 for R-series variant is being developed on NEC Corp’s MIPS Technologies Inc RISC box – HP-UX and NeXTstep on Motorola Inc 68000. The the Foundation-sponsored RS/6000 version is complete, but not yet tuned – and the Defence Research Agency is negotiating to take back that work from the Foundation – while Precision Architecture RISC and Alpha AXP variants are on the starting block. The Oracle Corp database and Informix Software Inc Wingz spreadsheet have already been used to test ANDF producer technologies – with no performance loss; IXI Ltd has been putting it through its graphics paces, testing against X.desktop graphics libraries.
