Eclipse Foundation and U.S. Government IT Leaders' Keynote Presentations Highlight OMG Technical Meeting in Washington, DC.

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- Intention of Eclipse Foundation to Implement OMG Healthcare IT Specifications, Wide Support for Group's C4I & Healthcare Standards Efforts Emerge

Members of the Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)) met in Washington, DC, USA during the week of November 1-5, 2004 to attend Information Days and tutorials, and extend their suite of software standards with new adoptions.

During the Technical Meeting, Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, announced the intention of the Foundation to create several open source projects to implement the OMG's healthcare specifications. Extending the existing support of the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) for the OMG's modeling standards, this effort will focus on integrating IT systems in the healthcare industry. Working in concert with the HL7 medical standards group, these new specifications will integrate healthcare IT from the doctor's office, to the hospital, to the insurance company. After Mike Milinkovich delivered a presentation on "Open Standards and Open Source: A Health Care Perspective" to the Healthcare Domain Task Force (DTF) meeting attendees, he remarked, "The synergy between open standards and open source is clear: Shared, open source implementations increase the rate of adoption of new technology standards. In the area of Healthcare and health record management, Eclipse will partner with the OMG to ensure that new standards are quickly backed by open source implementations and supported by the massive array of tools and frameworks which exist today within the Eclipse community."

Government IT Leaders Highlight Information Days

The following keynote presentations lent significant insight to meeting attendees toward their respective standards efforts.

--Mr. Lee Holcomb, Chief Technology Officer of the US Department of Homeland Security, keynoted a Coalition Day centered on software interoperability for emergency management.

--Mr. LeRoy Jones, Senior Technical Advisor to Dr. David Brailer at the Department of Health and Human Services, concentrated on interoperability of electronic health records at his keynote to OMG's Healthcare DTF meeting.

--Joseph Jarzombek, Deputy Director for Software Assurance for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, spoke on "Application of Multiple Independent Levels of Security to Enterprise Architecture" at an information day devoted to Information Assurance in High Risk Environments.

--George Thomas, Chief Software Architect for the General Services Administration, described use of Model Driven Architecture(R) (MDA(R)) and other OMG technology standards at GSA during e-Government Information Day.

New Software Standardization Efforts Concentrate on Security, Performance

OMG members issued Requests for Proposals (RFPs) defining requirements and deadlines for five new standards. Two will augment the industry standard for software-defined radios, defining the Security Subsystem and a Key Management facility. Using OMG's MDA these two RFPs define architecture and interoperable interfaces based on Platform Independent Models (PIMs) and Platform Specific Models (PSMs). In the C4I domain (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Information), an RFP seeks a PIM, PSM, and interface definitions for an Alert Management Service for Combat Management Systems.

In addition, OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture(R) (CORBA(R)) will add a standard framework for control of network transport Quality of Service, and the Software Process Engineering Metamodel specification will be updated to take advantage of the new capabilities of the Unified Modeling Language(R) (UML(R)) 2.0. Any interested company may join OMG and submit draft specifications in response to these RFPs. For additional information including deadlines see www.omg.org or send an email to [e-mail].

New Specification Adoptions in Life Sciences, Software Infrastructure, and more

Five draft specifications completed final OMG-member evaluation and started the series of votes that culminates in official adoption. Two of these are in the area of Life Sciences: Standardized, multifaceted support for handling of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism data, and a Life Sciences Analysis Engine. A set of interfaces standardizes client access to Global Navigation Systems, and a new service adds reflectivity to CORBA objects. Finally, OMG members approved the first maintenance revision of UML 2.0.

Last in the series of adoption votes is one by OMG's Board of Directors, officially declaring each new specification. OMG's Board met in Washington, DC where they voted to adopt the new CORBA security protocol SECP.

Tutorials, Software Demonstrations, Sponsor Presentation, and Co-located Meetings

During the meeting week, OMG and members presented four half-day tutorials on UML 2.0, the MDA, the Software Based Communications Architecture, and the group's other specifications. Ten member companies demonstrated software products implementing OMG specifications.

William Beckwith, CEO of meeting sponsor Objective Interface Systems (OIS), and Joseph Jacob, Senior VP of Sales & Marketing, spoke to the meeting on "The Past Present and Future of Distributed Communications."

Lastly, the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE, www.incose.org), held its Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in conjunction with this OMG meeting, as did the Business Process Management Notation (BPMN, www.bpmn.org) working group of the Business Process Management Initiative.

Next Meeting; Links to Additional Information

OMG members will meet next in Burlingame, CA, USA, during the week of January 31-February 4, 2005, sponsored by Boeing Corporation (www.boeing.com). Interested non-members may attend as observers; for an invitation, see http://www.omg.org/tcguest. Members may register for the meeting at www.omg.org/registration. OMG's home page is www.omg.org. Information about the MDA is collected at www.omg.org/mda. All OMG specifications may be downloaded free of charge from http://www.omg.org/specifications.

About The OMG

With well-established standards covering software from design and development, through deployment and maintenance, and extending to evolution to future platforms, the Object Management Group (OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration which maximizes ROI, the key to successful IT. OMG's standards cover multiple operating systems, programming languages, middleware and networking infrastructures, and software development environments. OMG's Modeling standards, the basis for the MDA, include the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM). CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is OMG's standard open platform with hundreds of millions of deployments running today.

Headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, with a U.S. government representative in Washington, DC, and international marketing representatives in Japan and Germany, the Object Management Group is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry specifications consortium. OMG member companies write, adopt, and maintain the organization's standards following a mature, open process. All current OMG specifications may be downloaded without charge from the organization's website, www.omg.org; the site also provides additional information about OMG and its activities. For information on joining the OMG, or questions not addressed on the website, please contact OMG headquarters by email at [e-mail], by phone at [phone], or by fax at [phone].

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