Interactive Software Engineering (ISE) has announced its BONCase for Windows NT/95. BONCase is an object-oriented analysis, design, and reverse-engineering workbench for the life-cycle of software modeling, architectural design, and user-developer communication. BONCase supports the OOAD Business Object Notation (BON) described in the book Seamless Object-Oriented Software Architecture: Analysis and Design of Reliable Systems, by Kim Walden and Jean-Marc Nerson (Prentice-Hall, 1995). BONCase is available for Windows NT/95 for $395. It is also available on a variety of UNIX platforms and OS/2 Warp.
Interactive Software Engineering
270 Storke Road, Suite 7
Santa Barbara, CA 93117
805-685-1006
http://www.eiffel.com
Franz has released Version 4.3 of Allegro CL, the dynamic object-oriented development environment for UNIX, and Allegro ODBC, which provides open database connectivity interfaces for Allegro CL applications.
Franz Inc.
1995 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-548-3600
http://www.franz.com
Template Graphics Software (TGS) has announced a 3-D graphics ActiveX control for Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. The 3Space Explorer control enables interactive 3-D content (including file support for VRML, Open Inventor, and DXF) to be incorporated into Web homepages. The control is programmable via VBScript and JavaScript. 3Space Explorer exposes over 150 programmable properties and methods for manipulating and viewing 3-D content. Three-Dimensional geometry can be easily modified using high-level tools for setting light sources, background colors, material properties, camera positions, and so on. With VBScript and JavaScript, interaction with a 3-D scene can be tied to other elements on the page, and can enable other elements on the page to drive the 3-D scene. This is useful in building 3-D user interfaces and front ends to such applications as online training, architectural walk-throughs, and the like. The tool sells for $150.00.
Template Graphics Software
9920 Pacific Heights Boulevard, Suite 20
San Diego, CA 92121
800-544-4847
http://www.tgs.com/
Expersoft has introduced PowerBroker CORBAplus for C++, an implementation of the OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) 2.0 specification. CORBAplus is a development system which provides a bridge between CORBA and Microsoft OLE, and an event-driven distributed-object model. This release includes a CORBA Naming Service, multithreaded support, and a suite of developer-oriented tools. CORBAplus supports asynchronous object requests, providing event-driven throughput while preserving the benefits of the object-oriented programming model. This lets programs continue processing while remote objects service their requests.
CORBAplus includes tools such as the CORBAplus IFR Explorer, a visual tool that lets you browse, select, and edit components of the Interface Repository. CORBAplus also offers a variety of configuration utilities for the NT run-time environment. CORBAplus for C++ runs on Windows NT/95 and several UNIX platforms.
Expersoft Corp.
6620 Mesa Ridge Road, Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92121
619-546-4100
http://www.expersoft.com
Lucent Technologies, formerly Bell Labs, has announced Inferno, an operating system that supports highly interactive applications for almost any computer or entertainment system, over any communications network, from telephony and cable television to satellite broadcast and the Internet. With Inferno, you only need to create one program to run on a variety of devices (computers, TVs, telephones, and the like). Inferno software requires minimal hardware and uses less than 1 MB of memory.
The Inferno offer includes the network operating system; the communications protocols (Styx), network API, programming language (Limbo), and virtual machine Dis). Inferno runs as a stand-alone operating system on Intel x86, MIPS and ARM processors, or can be hosted as a virtual system on UNIX, Windows 95/NT.
Inferno was developed by Rob Pike, Phil Winterbottom, and Sean Dorward of the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center, where UNIX and C/C++ were invented. A detailed description of Inferno is available on the Bell Labs Web site.
Lucent Technologies
600 Mountain Avenue
Murray Hill, NJ 07974
908-582-3000
http://inferno.bell-labs.com/inferno/
The Object Management Group (OMG) has announced a book entitled CORBA Fundamentals and Programming, published by John Wiley & Sons. CORBA Fundamentals and Programming provides an introduction to distributed-object computing, a description of CORBA and the Object Management Architecture (OMA), and a multi-object tutorial example. Jon Siegel, director of domain technology for the OMG, and coauthors Dan Frantz, Hal Mirsky, Raghu Hudli, Alex Thomas, Wilf Coles, Peter De Jong, Alan Klein, Brent Wilkins, Sean Baker, and Maurice Balick wrote the book, which includes eight code examples from seven vendors. They all implement identical functionality using the same IDL interfaces. All of the code has been used at IBM, Hewlett-Packard, SunSoft, ICL, Digital Equipment, Expersoft, and IONA Technologies. The book includes a disk containing all IDL interfaces, source code in C, C++, and Smalltalk, and makefiles for eight ORB environments.
John Wiley & Sons
605 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10158
800-255-5945
I-Kinetics has announced the release of its Database Component Server 3.0 and ComponentWare OLE Client 3.0. Based on CORBA, this release supports over 20 platforms, including Oracle, Sybase, Windows NT, Solaris, HP/UX, and any CORBA, OLE, or Java-capable client. The Database Component Server (DBCS) provides database service for any CORBA or Java-capable client. The OLE Client provides a high-performance OLE automation server alternative for Windows. Relational-to-object mapping is available via Microsoft's Data Access Object Model. The Interface Definition Language (IDL) provides a means of platform- and language-independent access to the Database Component Server.
I-Kinetics
1 New England Executive Park
Burlington, MA 01803-5005
800-454-6389
http://www.i-kinetics.com
Apple Computer has announced a new version of the OpenDoc SDK, which includes the KickStart viewer components and the release of the OpenDoc Developer Framework (ODF). The SDK is available at no cost at http://opendoc.apple.com or on a CD-ROM, which can be ordered from the Web site as well. The SDK includes third-party software, the OpenDoc Development Framework (ODF) Release 1 (an object-oriented framework for creating OpenDoc and Internet/Cyberdog compliant components, parts and containers), OpenDoc KickStart components, OpenDoc 1.0.4, and tools, sample code and documentation.
Apple Computer
One Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
800-462-4396
http://www.apple.com
DB/Explorer from Ontos is a development tool for building object-oriented databases. The tool provides tunable performance parameters (buffering, server-object cache size, locking, and so on), storage management (open, class-based options for tables, networks, images, and other data structures), concurrency controls (standard and user-defined semantics), schema/
metaschema manipulation, and C++ API and class library support. DB/Explorer, which sells for $495.00 and includes royalty-free run-time licensing, supports SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, and Windows NT.
Ontos
900 Chelmsford Street
Lowell, MA 01851
508-328-8000
http://www.ontos.com
Motorola's RISC Microprocessor Division has announced Version 3.0 of its Motorola C/C++ SDK for Mac OS. In addition to offering a complete set of development tools for Apple's MPW environment, including the Kuck & Associates Preprocessor (KAP), Version 3.0 includes "plug-in" versions of the C/C++ compilers that can be directly used by licensees of the Metrowerks CodeWarrior and Symantec Project Manager development environments. The Motorola SDK also includes versions of the highly optimized "libmoto" libraries that are compatible with the Apple, Metrowerks, and Symantec environments. The Motorola C/C++ SDKs are available for $299.00.
Motorola RISC Software, MS-OE 112
6501 William Cannon Drive West
Austin, Tx 78735-8598
512-891-2999
http://www.mot.com/PowerPC
MKS Integrity Engine 1.0 is a version-control tool for developing Web-based applications. The tool automates change management during the development and publishing process. With the Integrity Engine, users can access detailed audit trails of development, check files in and out for editing, and retrieve past versions of files. Additionally, users are given file-locking capabilities to ensure that only one user at a time has access to a file for editing.
Mortice Kern Systems
185 Columbia Street
Waterloo, ON
Canada N2L 5Z5
519-884-2251
http://www.mks.com
DataViews has announced DV-Centro 1.2, a tool for creating visual-programming languages for Windows NT applications. Based on an object-oriented C++ framework, DV-Centro provides a suite of graphical tools that let you create reusable components for visual-programming applications. DV-Centro includes a set of C++ utilities for memory management, infinite undo/redo, object storage/retrieval, journaling, and more. The tool also provides an Interactive Control Engine which manages events between the user display and application components.
DataViews Corp.
47 Pleasant Street
Northampton, MA 01060
413-586-4144
http://www.dvcorp.com
Secant Technologies has announced its OpenDoc Control Pack, a library which provides controls to extend those supplied by OS/2, Windows, and the Macintosh. These general-purpose widgets can be used by all OpenDoc applications to enter and present information. The Control Pack library includes controls for spreadsheets, calendar, data combo box, cell box, cell-combo box, RTF viewer, data field, LED gauge, split box, hint bubble, 3-D panel, GIF control, and more.
Secant Technologies
23811 Chagrin Boulevard, Suite 244
Beachwood, OH 44122
216-595-3830
http://www.secant.com
Crystal has announced a 16-bit and 32-bit Delphi Visual Component Library (VCL) for Crystal Reports Professional 4.5. The new VCL provides an interface that enables visual control over integration of Crystal Reports into Delphi applications. The new VCL provides more than 80 properties, including VBX properties that allow conversion of existing VBX applications to the new VCL. The new VCL for Delphi is available at the Crystal Web site.
Crystal Software
1095 West Pender Street, 4th Floor
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6E 2M6
604-681-3435
http://www.seagate.com/software/crystal
Qualsoft has announced that George Version 3.0, a source-code documentation tool, now supports Windows 3.1/95/NT, in addition to SunOS, Solaris, and HP-UX. George automatically produces documents which meet FDA, ISO-9001, Milspec, CMM, and other specifications. The tool, which is built around a C/C++ source-code information engine, supports HTML, FrameMaker, Interleaf, and RTF publishing formats.
Qualsoft Corp.
1860 Embarcadero Road, Suite 175
Palo Alto, CA 94303
415-494-6100
http://www.qsoft.com
O'Reilly & Associates has released Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats, Second Edition, by James Murray and William vanRyper. The second edition includes articles on graphics-file formats not covered in the first edition, such as PNG, SPIFF, DPX, SAF, and 3DS. It also includes descriptions of new data-compression methods-extensions to JPEG compression, and the JBIG, ART, and fractal compression methods.
Additionally, sections have been added on encrypting graphics files, detecting viruses in graphics files, dealing with corrupt graphics files, and writing your own file formats and file-format specs. Overall, the second edition includes details on more than 100 file formats with hypertext links to original vendor file-format specs, graphics test images, coding examples, and graphics conversion and manipulation software, with updates on the World Wide Web. The book also includes CD-ROM for quick look-ups and information links to the Internet, as well as a printed book. Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats, Second Edition, ISBN 1-56592-161-5, sells for $79.95.
O'Reilly & Associates
101 Morris Street
Sebastopol, CA 95472
800-998-9938
ObjectSpace has announced Web<Toolkit>, a C++ class library that supports HTML page creation using a set of C++ classes representing HTML elements, including text, links, graphics, tables, forms, frames, and widgets (radio buttons, check boxes, and the like). Additionally, the tool provides automatic encoding of special text characters on HTML output and automatic decoding of form field contents for CGI-bin executables using the ANSI/ISO Standard Template Library. Web<Toolkit> for the PC sells for $349.00 and $475.00 for UNIX.
ObjectSpace
14881 Quorum Drive, Suite 400
Dallas, TX 75240
214-934-2496
http://www.objectspace.com