Despite heavy lobbying by Digital Equipment Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co, the Object Management Group’s Technical Committee passed the Common Object Request Broker Architecture 2 interoperability recommendation by a 3.2:1 margin last week. CORBA 2 initialisation was passed unopposed. Along with other pending decisions on Common Object Services Specification II, the TCP/IP-based Universal Networked Objects/DEC-Common Inter-Object Request Broker Protocol for interoperability between object request brokers goes before the Object Group board on December 6 in New Jersey. The adoption of Universal Networked Objects means that Distributed Computing Environment will not be the mandatory protocol for object request brokers. However, the proposal does not exclude the Environment from being used as an underlying technology for object request brokers. It does mean that to be CORBA 2-compliant networked object request brokers will have to communicate using the Universal Networked Objects protocol. DEC and Hewlett-Packard say their object request brokers will continue to be based on Distributed Computing Environment – while IBM Corp will provide a Distributed Computing Environment protocol gateway for its Distributed System Object Model in addition to supporting Universal Networked Objects. When the original interoperability submissions were made, it was widely assumed that the Computing Environment would be endorsed in some form. Observers say the spotlight will now fall on the Environment’s future – some analysts have said that if it was rejected by the Object Group it could be a serious, if not fatal, blow to the technology. Major Universal Networked Objects contributor ICL Plc promises a compliant system based on its Dais Object Request Broker in 1995 – sooner rather than later. Having resolved transaction management and interoperability, the Object Group is targeting Microsoft Corp’s Common Object Model-to-Common Object Request Broker Architecture interoperability and security. ICL has four engineers developing a security proposal it will present to the Object Group’s technical committee meet in Cambridge, England next March which it is co-hosting. The proposal is based on ICL’s Generic Security Service applications programming interface and its AccessManager development, plus its work with Compagnie des Machines Bull SA and Siemens AG in the European Sesame group.
