Chorus Systemes SA has worked its Chorus Object Oriented Layer of application programming interfaces into a Corba-compliant Object Request Broker it is calling Chorus Cool. Chorus says the request broker will enable developers to create distributed real-time object applications for call switching, network management, database access, groupware, multimedia, Internet services, distributed processing environments and process control. As well as offering Cool on its Chorus microkernel, the French company is implementing the object request broker under Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix, Solaris, Windows and Windows NT in the hope that users will get turned on to its microkernel: it is not seeking a place at the general-purpose object request broker vendor table. Designed to run under Chorus’s Classix and Fusion microkernels, Cool supports Interface Definition Language-to-C++ mapping with C language mapping to be added in future. As well as the Interface Definition Language application programming interfaces, run-time libraries and compiler it is calling Chic, Cool provides naming, synchronization, group invocation, node and domain services. The invocation service enables a client to invoke an operation on one or several servers transparently. Cool was designed in conjunction with France Telecom, the Committee on European Posts & Telecommunications and the European Union’s Esprit Projects Commandos (No 2071), IS (No 2267) and Ouverture (No 6603). Chorus hopes to attract the telecommunications companies, especially its partners in the European Union’s Stream Open Microprocessor Initiative, including Alcatel SA, L M Ericsson Telefon AB, Philips Electronics NV, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssystems AG and GEC Alsthom SA. Chorus is preparing to detail a Componentized OS strategy at the Embedded Systems show in Boston at the beginning of April. It will emphasize the creation of re-usable application components using the microkernel. An evaluation version of Cool is available from Chorus’s Web site. The $10m-a-year company has 75 staff – 50 in Europe, a dozen or so in the US and a handful in the Asia-Pacific region. It claims it has had several profitable quarters.
