Texas Instruments Inc now estimates that the object repository it has been developing with Microsoft Corp for Cairo will not be ready until the end of 1996, a year later than the two had originally planned. The repository will also feature in a future version of Texas Instruments’ Composer software engineering tool set. The timetable, as it stands, pushes the release of Cairo, Microsoft’s object-oriented follow-on to Windows NT, out to sometime around December 1996. Texas Instruments said that both companies had underestimated just how much work was involved, and blamed delays on the difficulty in finding and hiring staff with enough object-oriented experience. Microsoft is apparently not at all happy with itself over the way the project has gone so far. A first cut of the repository will go to strategic partners and developers in July 1996 as part of what Texas Instruments describes as an open process for industry comment, before the thing is frozen. A more polished repository, which observers say could be part of the Cairo beta release, may begin to appear a quarter later. By December 1996, the repository, and Cairo are intended to be complete.
