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1993-10-29
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SOMobjects
.Developer Toolkit
.Workstation Enabler
.Workgroup Enabler
Making reuse a reality
FULFILLING THE PROMISE OF OBJECT ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY
____________________________________________________
In today's enterprise, the importance of information -- and
the quantity of it -- are growing exponentially. The speed
and performance of the hardware that processes information
have easily kept pace. But the technology for creating
software has not, causing a terrible drag on business --
whether you're an executive waiting for long-overdue
applications, or an independent software vendor trying to
get product to market.
A succession of new approaches -- modular programming,
structured programming, computer-aided software engineering
(CASE), fourth-generation languages -- were each heralded in
their day as the solution. But each ultimately proved to
have a serious downside:excessive programmer or computer
resources needed, limitations on program size, difficulty
(or impossibility) of modification...while time and costs to
develop software continue to grow.
Unlike those earlier attempts, OBJECT ORIENTED (OO) technology
represents a fundamental change in the concept of software development.
With the OO paradigm, the same engineering and manufacturing techniques
that enable hardware to grow in performance while declining in
price are applied to programming. The promise of OO technology is for
software objects -- segments of code combining data and procedures --
to become standard, off-the-shelf parts. A programmer can then
incorporate these objects in a system as easily as an engineer
incorporates an off-the-shelf semiconductor chip in a circuit board
design.
THE FUTURE IS NOW
_________________
Creating interchangeable, reusable software components is very much a
reality today: you can choose from a variety of object oriented
programming languages, design and analysis aids, and visual
programming tools. You can also find OO enablers and frameworks
built into the latest releases of some operating systems, including
IBM Operating System/2(R) (OS/2(R)) Versions 2.0 and 2.1. What you
haven't been able to find -- until now -- are some key pieces needed
to complete a system that works as smoothly and openly as the
hardware development process.
Now SOMobjects(TM) tools fill in some of these missing pieces by
breaking objects free from ties to a specific programming language.
On a single machine, the System Object Model (SOM) provides an
object-structured protocol that allows applications to access and
use objects and object definitions, regardless of what
programming language created them, with no need to recompile
the application. SOM's language-neutral character not only allows
robust software objects to be easily used and reused wherever
they're needed, it also enables a greater degree of openness
than ever before in the development and use of object oriented
programming (OOP) facilities across multiple operating platforms.
What's more, SOMobjects incorporates Distributed SOM (DSOM)
technology that provides a base for OOP development and use over
entire networks. With the IBM SOMobjects Developer Toolkit, your
programmers can start taking advantage of SOM and DSOM immediately.
SOMobjects is available for both the OS/2 2.0 (or higher) and
IBM AIX/6000(TM) 3.2 (or higher) operating systems and is planned
for the Windows(TM) environment. Complying with industrywide standards
of the Object Management Group's (OMG(R)) Common Object Request
Broker Architecture (CORBA), SOMobjects provides an extensive set
of facilities for putting the power and speed of OO technology to
work for you.
HIGHLIGHTS
__________
IBM SOMobjects gives professional programmers a comprehensive toolkit
for creating OO class libraries and instances of those
classes -- that is, objects that belong to particular
classes -- using SOM and DSOM technology. Among the product's
powerful functions and benefits are:
- LANGUAGE-NEUTRAL SUPPORT for the definition,
construction and use of OO systems -- by defining an
application programming interface (API) to SOM objects based
on simple procedure calls -- allows applications written in
different programming languages to use a common class library.
- UPWARD BINARY COMPATIBILITY of SOM class libraries, as dynamic
link libraries (DLL) that can be replaced without requiring
recompilation of application source code, makes it easy for
end users to install new releases of system libraries.
- SOM/IDL COMPILER is key to language neutrality and supports
the OMG standard Interface Definition Language (IDL). IDL gives
individual object implementations the means to tell potential
clients what operations are available and how they should be invoked.
By mapping the public and private types for a given SOM class to
language-specific bindings, the compiler allows SOM objects to be
used by different programming languages.
- DISTRIBUTED SOM supports OMG's CORBA standards:
- Workstation DSOM provides support for cross-process
and cross-address transparent access to objects in a
single-system environment.
- Workgroup DSOM enables you to define or access
objects remotely in a distributed workgroup local
area network configuration across supported
platforms (e.g., OS/2 to AIX/6000).
- LANGUAGE BINDINGS FOR C AND C++ allow programmers in
those languages to use SOM objects and create new SOM
object classes with ease. Other SOM bindings may be
available from language vendors.
- REPLICATION FRAMEWORK makes copies of a single object
available concurrently to multiple clients, and
maintains consistency among the copies, with updates to
any one copy automatically reflected in all other
copies. It's especially useful for collaborative
applications when you need updated information
instantly. Fault tolerance is provided to ensure object
integrity in the event of a node failure.
- PERSISTENCE FRAMEWORK allows you to save and restore SOM
objects to and from a repository that can be a file
system, database or object database; you can also change
to another format (e.g.,Lotus(R) to Excel).
- EMITTER FRAMEWORK that produces an output file
representing part or all of an object interface
definition -- structured to minimize effort, improve
quality and simplify maintenance -- makes it easy
to develop additional language bindings for SOM.
- COLLECTION CLASSES FRAMEWORK gives programmers such
frequently needed data structures as lists, sets, queues
and dictionaries, and lets them inherit from and use
these SOM classes in applications with no need to recode
or retest the functions.
- WORKSTATION ENABLER, for OS/2 or AIX/6000, enables the
execution of SOM-based applications in a single-machine
environment.
- WORKGROUP ENABLER, for OS/2 or AIX/6000, enables the
execution of SOM-based applications across a
multiple-node workgroup LAN distributed environment.
SOMobjects can be ordered from IBM at 1-800-342-6672 or
contact your IBM Authorized Remarketer. In Canada call
1-800-465-7999 for price and ordering information.