Making a second pass at object application technology, IBM Corp will release a new version of its VisualAge toolset by year-end for use with a 1997 business program development environment called San Francisco (Shareable Frameworks). Following the demise of its Taligent Inc venture and the all but disappearance of OpenDoc, IBM has turned for guidance to the one part of its business that’s had real any success with objects, AS/400. The notion is to get ISVs and application developers creating logistics, finance, distribution and manufacturing applications from re-usable business object component building blocks that can be built, retrieved and integrated through San Francisco. It’s designed to increase software reuse, improve programmer productivity and reduce time to market, and the framework will be made available across multiple architectures. After examining popular business applications running on its platforms, IBM concluded that when boiled down, many components, functions and toolkits are identical and need not be re-invented for every new program. From this understanding grew the notion of an application development model with a common language and shareable component objects and tools residing upon its System Object Model (SOM) backbone. From the 30-odd partners it had working on the original San Francisco specs, IBM picked reference models from a handful, plus some of its own work. The first hurdle was crossed last fall when, after a run-off, an object- oriented GuideLine toolset from UK company JBA Holdings Plc, Macclesfield, Cheshire, was picked over VisualAge as the preferred development toolset for San Francisco. IBM immediately struck a cross-licensing agreement with JBA, and as a result the new VisualAge release will include the C++-like JBA Object Toolkit (JOT) and SOM-compliant browser and workshop. JBA is working with other IBM partners, including Sweden’s International Business Systems AB – a 1,000-person Stockholm company that has done extensive work rebuilding OS/400 applications with object – developing San Francisco at IBM’s Boeblingen center in Germany. The 40-person development team includes eight from JBA and a dozen from IBS. JBA’s SOM-compliant Object Workshop allows developers to point to and retrieve any other SOM component over LANs or the net. It includes a GUI painter and 35 controls, plus graphing, database container and other widgets. JBA will offer a version of Object Workshop for OS/2 in July. JBA’s JOT language is claimed to be almost identical to C++ but tailored for business application development, doing away with the programming language’s more esoteric structures. IBM’s Toronto labs and JBA will create a full business programming C++ language from JOT and include it and the Object Workshop in the new VisualAge release by year-end. Re-usable manufacturing, financial, distribution and business objects plus a variety of toolkits being created by JBA, IBS and others partners will be available for San Francisco. How ISVs will make money from San Francisco or whether they’ll buy into it in the first place is unclear. With up to 40% of components identical across applications, and – we’re told – another 40% of tools and code that’s shareable, that leaves only 20% of the development sandwich for value-add. Alpha versions of San Francisco will be released in the second and third quarters of this year, betas are due in the fourth, with production shipments next year. It will be available direct and OEM for Unix, Windows, Windows NT, AS/400 and mainframes. Work on San Francisco started more than two years ago, but only in the last six months has IBM decided to produce the thing.
