Gaining more followers as the days go by (CI No 3,086), Rational Software Corp, purveyor of the graphical object-oriented Unified Modeling Language UML, has just brought on board IBM Corp and Canadian object tool vendor ObjecTime Ltd, to extend the UML specification to include formal methods. Santa Clara, California- based Rational says this will benefit the 10% to 20% of industries – such as avionics and telecommunications – that develop real-time, mission-critical systems, and as such require a mathematically proven model of UML, which it says IBM can provide. ObjectTime, a Kanata, Ontario-based company, is run by alumni of Northern Telecom Ltd’s Bell-Northern Research arm. It has expertise in real-time object design, having developed the Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling method, ROOM, and a tool which animates and simulates object design.
