Hitachi Ltd’s Hitachi Software unit plans to introduce a revamped line of development tools next month, including a new version of ObjectIQ, the firm’s team-based development environment, and a new visual programming product called AppGallery. As part of the new release of Object 3.1, Hitachi’s two other development products ObjectReuser, an object repository, and Distributed ObjectIQ, the mechanism Hitachi provides for distributed communications, will now be housed under the ObjectIQ brand name. Version 3.1 of the software will include support for the Object Management Group’s Corba 2.O, Object Linking & Embedding 2.0 and Common Gateway Interface – it currently uses Distributed Computing Environment. A new version of ObjectReuser is also under way. It has been completely re-written, says Tony Jones, Hitachi Europe’s marketing manager, to enable developers to browse HyperText Mark-up Language documents of their C and C++ developments. This, says Hitachi, provides a much easier way to classify re-usable components, because all you need to store in the object repository are Universal Resource Locator references. App-Gallery, meanwhile, is a new venture for Hitachi and has been specifically designed for desktop developers. Already shipping in Japan, it is to go on the market in Europe from next month. It comes with a component palette, wizards and end user customization capabilities. It will be available for Windows95, Windows 3.X and Windows NT. And support for Java applets is also promised.
