DEC has staged a quiet coup in the game to get proprietary technology embodied as a standard, since it appears that its Compound Document Architecture is to be the base technology for a toolkit to enable developers to implement the Open Document Architecture standard. As reported briefly (CI No 1,644), IBM, DEC, Unisys, ICL, Bull and Siemens Nixdorf have got together to form the Open Document Architecture Consortium and it is this consortium that is adopting DEC’s CDA as its base technology. The consortium’s aim is to develop software that enables documents containing a mixture of text, pictures and diagrams to be sent electronically from one type of computer to another across the world. Such standardisation enables documents to be edited or viewed quickly and easily, and frees users from time-consuming activities like retyping and reformatting. The documents can also be exchanged more rapidly and retained in an accessible form indefinitely. In a roundabout sort of way this appears to bring DEC’s Application Control Architecture currently submitted in response to the Object Management Group’s request for technology for an Object Request Broker – in as a backdoor standard. This is because the Compound Document Architecture uses the Application Control Architecture to invoke the applications needed to create compound documents… The software toolkit developed by the consortium, using DEC’s Compound Document Architecture as a base, will be licensed and the specifications published. The Consortium says that the ODA standard also complies with the procurement policies of numerous government bodies throughout the world. The group is established as a European Economic Interest Group in Brussels and actively invites new members worldwide. Nobody seemed to know whether Xerox had been canvassed.
