Diverse tools will battle in object space; AI, Case and 4GL products evolving — "business objects" looming - Field Report

Software Magazine, August, 1994 by Jack Vaughan

New and not-so-new software companies now promote object-oriented software development as a means to speed application deployment. This trend has enough impetus to alter the tools marketplace. Eventually, software makers from distinct segments will meet in a common object software arena. Like "silver bullet" solutions that have gone before it, object technology promises to better automate software programming and to create more reusable software modules.

So far, standardization of important underlying object software technology has moved at a good clip. The Object Management Group (OMG), Framingham, Mass., has successfully attracted members. Still, even as a distributed application showcase was scheduled to occur at last week's Object World show in San Francisco, the delayed availability of a Corba 2.0 standard for object request broker (ORB) interoperability had caused some to comment that the OMG must formalize Corba 2.0 soon.

For "bleeding-edge" MIS departments steeped m computer-aided software engineering (Case) and artificial intelligence (AI), new object technology may be a natural evolutionary progression. At least, that is the hope of some established Case and AI software vendors. These players -- as well as fourth-generation language (4GL) toolmakers -- have worked on object technology for years. They look for a competitive advantage for their next-generation products.

Different vendor backgrounds lead to different approaches to the object tool market, but there are signs of various products evolving toward a common category of object-oriented application development tools, said Paul Harmon, editor of the Object-Oriented Strategies newsletter, Arlington, Mass.

"We're in a transition period. No one knows what the ideal tool is," said Harmon. There is a likelihood, he added, that two or three years from now, tools will be pretty much alike. Then, vendors will begin to compete head-on. Harmon divides the overall object market into tools, databases, operating systems and class libraries. These libraries are increasingly described as "business objects."

Tool vendors hope to ride their products on the back of distributed object technology in the form of ORBs, which at times resemble operating system software. These brokers will provide underpinning for high-end languages and tools. They include IBM's Distributed System Object Model (Dsom); ORB Plus from Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co., Cupertino, Calif; Object Broker from Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), Maynard, Mass.; and Distributed Objects Everywhere (DOE) from Mountain View, Calif.-based SunSoft Inc. Through a deal with DEC, industry leader Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash., is, like others, exercising influence on the interoperating ORB standards process. Microsoft offers its Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) 2.0.

Among recent object tool entries is the Object Management Workbench (OMW), a design and analysis tool from IntelliCorp Inc., Mountain View, Calif. Other producers now highlighting their object capabilities include Cadre Technologies Inc., Providence, R.I.; Logiscope Technologies Inc. (formerly Verilog Inc. , Dallas; Intersolv Inc., Rockville, Md.; Inference Corp., El Segundo, Calif.; Trinzic Corp., Palo Alto, Calif.; Interactive Development Environments ME) Inc., San Francisco; and Easel Corp., Burlington, Mass. These vendors will tend to focus, for now, on familiar customers.

For IntelliCorp, OMW is an important step. In fact, the company -- little known outside its first chosen field of artificial intelligence, and with mostly red ink to report in recent quarters -- is in the midst of a challenging product transition. Financial backing from database maker Informix Software Inc., Menlo Park, Calif., and the methodology support of James Martin & Co., Reston, Va., are crucial for IntelliCorp to achieve what amounts to a company turnaround.

Meanwhile, after years of success in the 4GL software arena, Easel is seeing maturity in its traditional product line that calls for a new approach. Its strategy for future success relies much on its Object Studio product line.

Easel bought into object technology via its 1992 acquisition of the Enfin SmallTalk-based development environment from Enfin Software Corp. In the last year, said John Can Easel's vice president of product strategy, the firm has extended Enfin. It joins Object Studio family member Synchrony, a business object modeler.

"Customers said Enfin was nice for rapid application development" said Canestraro, "but wanted business rules also."

Easel would claim that its offerings do not spring solely from a 4GL background. Other vendors, such as Trinzic Corp., itself an aggregation of several tool vendors, would make a similar claim. Trinzic's Object tool became available in June.

Dark Side of Objects

Other vendors are responding to the forms that draw IntelliCorp and Easel into the object arena. Last month, Case advocate Synon Inc., Larkspur, Calif., made a strong entry into the object product space with its Obsydian application development environment with class libraries. Synon Michael's DeVries, product marketing director, said that his product takes a conceptual view similar to that of IntelliCorp's OMW. "Based on our experience, however, we have a different focus on going into [the software] production [stage]," said DeVries.