OMG Members Meet, Standardize Pathway Connecting CORBA and XML; Other Work Advances in Vertical Areas and On the UML.

Business/Technology Editors

NEEDHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 20, 2000

The latest Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)) Technical Meeting Week, sponsored by Component Source, Inc., attracted approximately 500 OMG members and guests to Orlando, FL, USA, where they advanced the organization's standards efforts and viewed technical presentations, tutorials, and demonstrations of products that implement OMG specifications.

Starting its final series of votes during this meeting was an OMG standard representation for XML documents and data in CORBA(R) applications. By translating the structure and content of an XML document into CORBA types according to the World Wide Web's Document Object Model (DOM), this new specification combines the benefits of the CORBA programming environment - including its transactional integrity, security, scalability, and robustness - with the increasingly popular XML format for structured documents and data.

Platform Technology Committee (PTC) Standards Efforts

OMG's PTC works on standards that affect the CORBA infrastructure, and on object-oriented analysis and design. At this meeting, the PTC initiated work standardizing an interface for Smart Transducers, inexpensive single-chip sensors and network interfaces used by the millions in the aerospace, automotive, and other industries. Other standards efforts initiated at this meeting include a mapping of the CORBA protocol GIOP to the telecommunications Stream Control Transmission Protocol or SCTP, and a facility that will serve security authorization tokens to CORBA applications. A mapping from OMG Interface Definition Language (OMG IDL(TM)) to the programming language PL/1 reached final form and started the series of votes leading to adoption.

OMG's Unified Modeling Language(TM) (UML(TM)) is the computer industry's standard language for object-oriented analysis and design. At this meeting, members extended to December 31, 2000 the letter-of-intent (LOI) deadline for companies to become involved in the major revision Release 2.0 of the UML. At meeting time, a record 29 companies had already submitted LOIs, indicating intense industry interest in evolving this important standard. Any organization can join OMG and participate in the organization's specification adoption process; for details see below.

Industry-Specific Technologies

OMG's Domain Technology Committee (DTC) standardizes technology in vertical industries including Manufacturing, Telecommunications, Transportation, Finance/Insurance, and others. Life Science Research was the most active domain at this meeting, advancing two new specifications to final vote and initiating one new effort. Starting their final series of votes leading to adoption as OMG standards were a new facility that standardizes access to 3-dimensional macromolecular structure data, and another that defines interfaces for queries to a repository of bibliographic data. A new effort will standardize representation and manipulation of biomolecular sequence entities.

In other industries and markets, the DTC issued Requests for Proposals (RFPs) initiating efforts to standardize a Software Portfolio Management Facility, a Workflow Process Definition Facility, and a major update of OMG's Distributed Simulation Facility, which is based on the United States government's distributed simulation High Level Architecture (HLA).

Other Activities

OMG members viewed nine demonstrations of products based on OMG technologies, including live interoperability demonstrations of CORBA object request brokers and OMG's standard software design repository, the Meta-Object Facility (MOF(TM)). OMG's new Space Domain Task Force, meeting for the first time, hosted a Space and Satellite Information Days workshop and an insiders' tour of the Kennedy Space Center. Tutorials covered basic CORBA, the new technologies grouped under the heading CORBA 3, and the UML. Karen Boucher, Executive Vice President, of the Standish Group presented results of a survey of the object technology market. Many other speakers presented both technical and non-technical talks to the different OMG task forces that met during the week.

Participating in OMG's Standards Adoption Process

Any organization may join OMG and participate in the standards efforts initiated at the Orlando meeting. RFPs stating requirements and deadlines may be downloaded from www.omg.org/techprocess/meetings/schedule/. An overview of the adoption process appears at http://www.omg.org/gettingstarted/processintro.htm. Information about joining OMG appears at http://www.omg.org/memberservices/index.htm.

Next Meeting

OMG members meet five times each year to advance the organization's standards. The next meeting, sponsored by Borland Corporation, will take place in Irvine, CA, USA from February 26 through March 2, 2001. Registration information for OMG members will be available shortly at www.omg.org/registration/registration-tc.htm, and for non-members at www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/guest.htm.

About The OMG

With the support of its membership of software vendors, software developers and end users, the OMG's CORBA is "The Middleware That's Everywhere(TM)." Since 1989, the OMG has been "Setting The Standards For Distributed Computing(TM)" through its mission to promote the theory and practice of object technology for the development of distributed computing systems. The goal is to provide a common architectural framework for object-oriented applications based on widely available interface specifications. The OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, with an office in Tokyo, Japan as well as international marketing offices in Bahrain, Germany, India, and the UK, along with a U.S. government representative in Washington, DC, USA. The OMG is also a major sponsor of the Integrate 2001 trade show and conference, which will be held September 19-21, 2001 in New York City.

For information on joining the OMG or additional information, please contact OMG headquarters by phone at [phone], by fax at [phone], or by email at [e-mail]. The OMG provides current information and services for Distributed Object Computing through The Information Brokerage(R) on the World Wide Web at www.omg.org and at www.corba.org. Information about OMG Japan can be found at www.omgj.org.

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