Although Orbix developers can already do the job manually, Dublin firm Iona Technologies Ltd will soon offer the ability to generate Corba-compliant objects automatically from Object Linking & Embedding with an enhanced version of its Orbix Object Request Broker, which was previewed in alpha form at Object World in San Francisco last week. The product will ship in the fourth quarter. Effectively, Windows developers using Visual Basic, or any other application that can talk to Object Linking & Embedding Automation Servers, use unchanged Object Linking & Embedding to talk to Object Linking & Embedding Automation Server. This server forwards calls out over the network to regular IDL Interface Definition Language objects. It enables Corba IDL objects to be represented as local Object Linking & Embedding objects. To do this, Iona is enhancing the Interface Language compiler back-end in Orbix to generate Object Linking & Embedding Automation Server/C++ stubs. The stubs look like regular OLE Automation Servers to Windows applications. An Object Linking & Embedding application in Windows will map to Interface Definition Language operations, enabling Windows applications to call objects anywhere on a network, it claims. The Microsoft Corp-Digital Equipment Corp Common Object Model is good at interfaces and graphics, but less useful for writing distributed, networked applications, Iona believes; and it is exactly this requirement that it thinks Orbix can fulfil. Other Orbix enhancements planned include real-time working, by year-end; fault-tolerant Orbix via integration with Stratus Computer Inc’s ISIS, which is due in the first quarter of next year; and Distributed Computing Environment Orbix and Cobol language mapping, due some time next year.
