Alliances Could Mean Better Integration

N. B.

Following close on the heels of Sun Microsystem's deal with Next to incorporate the applications development layer of NextStep into the Solaris operating system (see January BYTE, page 148), Microsoft and DEC say they will integrate DEC's Object Broker distributed-object system with Microsoft's OLE technology. Microsoft says the agreement will let Windows- and OLE-supported Mac applications seamlessly access data and objects on a variety of platforms.

These deals reflect the growing need for seamless integration between operating-system platforms. DEC's Object Broker runs on many Unix platforms (e.g., HP-UX, SunOS, AIX, OSF/1, and Ultrix), and on Windows, Mac, and VMS. Object Broker is a development kit that lets developers write applications that can communica te with data and applications on other platforms that support the Object Broker interface.

In the agreement with Microsoft, DEC will integrate OLE into Object Broker, forming an architecture called COM (Common Object Model). For example, COM will let a Windows application running on a client PC or a Mac application supporting OLE directly access data being generated on a Unix server. Microsoft and DEC demonstrated a PC running an Excel spreadsheet being supplied with data from a stock-ticker application running on a remote Unix-based system.

Sun aims at a similar objective in its deal with Next. NextStep offers an object-oriented development environment that will be incorporated into Solaris, while Sun brings its networking and distributed-object technologies to the table. With Solaris running on Intel machines, Sun hopes to provide a similar level of integration and seamless data access across platforms as that proposed by the COM specification.

Both agreements are just that--agreements rather than working products. According to Microsoft's OLE product manager David Seres, Microsoft and DEC will distribute the COM specification in the first quarter of this year and will have an alpha version of the Object Broker-OLE product in the second quarter.

Sun declined to announce a schedule for its so-called "OpenStep" implementation. Further details will be announced in April.

One thing working in Sun's favor is NextStep's application development environment. "This is not technology under development," said Next chairman and CEO Steve Jobs about NextStep, which is already on its third release. "It's technology that's been really battle-tested and industry-acclaimed."

John Rymer, an analyst with Patricia Seybold's Group, says the Sun/Next deal is a major step forward for NextStep. HP recently announced it will integrate Taligent's Application and Development Frameworks into HP-UX and join Apple and IBM as a minority shareholder. But these frameworks won't ship until later this ye ar. "Specifications arise from shipping products and Next has a lot more out there than does Taligent," Rymer says. "This is an important step for Next reaching industry recognition."