Novell Inc is at last dragging itself into the graphical development market announcing support for Visual Basic and NetBasic as development platforms for Netware, its network operating system. The aim of the move is to allow developers and network administrators to create NetWare applications, NetWare Loadable Modules, and administration utilities which can all be managed across networks including the Internet. To make the development path easier, Novell has also licensed the Network Management Extension (NMX), itself based on Net2000, from HiTecSoft Corp. NMX is designed to manage and automate script execution across networks: in this way, says Novell, administrators and developers can create custom logic to automate specific network tasks by writing Basic scripts to query databases, monitor servers, and load and unload NLMs. Since NMX can be used over the Internet, it will be particularly useful for remote site management, says the company. On a separate tack, Novell is also opening its NetWare Directory Services (NDS) to support Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) controls, Visual Basic controls, and Delphi controls, the aim being to provide developers with tools to develop directory-enabled applications, such as the ability to alter multiple passwords simultaneously. Finally, the company announced that the NDS-based Net2000 component management services will support OLE objects – including the new ActiveX – and Java applets across networks. The announcement was made after Novell signed a deal to license Sun Microsystems Inc’s Java, which it will embed into Netware by the end of 1996 (CI 2875).
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