Good news for developers using Hewlett-Packard Co’s Case Edge programming environment writing on HP 9000 and Apollo DN systems – the HP SoftBench and HP Encapsulator packages are to be licensed to third-party hardware and software vendors, which should mean that applications using the tools will be able to run on alien systems via porting paths. Interactive Development Environments, Soft Tool and Verilog are all candidates for doing the migration technology – but no deals have been inked yet. Hewlett has also announced that C++/Softbench for Case Edge will be available in August for $10,000, in addition to HP Branch Validator, a tool for software testing and validation, which is out now for between $2,000 to $30,000 depending on the number of users.
