OMG enhances internationalization of CORBA.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 6, 1995--The Object Management Group (OMG) has committed to further enhancing the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and its dependent services and facilities by seeking technology for an Internationalization Facility, a Time Operations Facility and Data Type Extensions to OMG's IDL (Interface Definition Language).

"CORBA and the Object Management Architecture is the universal standard for distributed object computing," stated Chris Stone, president, OMG. "Now we want to make CORBA even more adaptable for developers worldwide."

The effort to internationalize CORBA and the OMA include two separate RFPs. OMG's Common Facilities Task Force has developed an RFP for an Internationalization Facility and a Time Operations Facility. OMG's Object Request Broker Task Force has issued an RFP for Data Type Extensions to OMG's IDL.

Internationalization Facility and Time Operations

OMG's Common Facilities Task Force is seeking technology to enable developers to use an information system or application in their own language using their own cultural conventions. In addition, this technology will allow the developer to use a culture's numeric and currency conventions. The Time Operations Facility will provide a standard way of representing dates and times.

Both facilities are part of the Common Facilities portion of the OMA and are fundamentally designed to be accessed from desktop applications. They can be both enterprise-wide and market-specific facilities that are distributed throughout the network via a CORBA-conformant ORB. The key benefit of standardized Common Facilities is that they are plug-and-play developing tools, thereby reducing the effort needed to build robust OMA-conformant distributed environments.

IDL Type Extensions

OMG's ORB Task Force has issued an RFP for IDL Type Extensions. The technology will enable CORBA to integrate wide character types, extended integer types and extended floating point types. This will make it easier for programs with extended characters, such as those written in the Japanese, Korean and Chinese languages, or scientific computations, to use CORBA.

CORBA is OMG's specification for portable and interoperable Object Request Brokers and is the leading standard messaging technology for heterogeneous distributed object computing.

OMG Procedure

In order to respond to the Common Facilities RFP and or the Object Request Broker RFP OMG must receive a Letter of Intent (LOI) no later than Friday, June 23, 1995. Initial technology submissions are due in to OMG by Tuesday, Aug. 22, 1995.

All submissions will be thoroughly evaluated by the RFP's issuing Task Force before being voted on by OMG's Technical Committee and Board of Directors. For more information on submitting technology or on the OMG process, contact Geoff Speare, technical liaison, at: [phone].

OMG's Object Management Architecture

OMG believes wide-scale adoption of the OMA and its supporting interface specifications, such as COBRA and the Common Object Services Specifications (COSS), will provide product developers and technology users with the means to build heterogeneous software systems distributed across all major hardware, operating systems and language environments.

Object Request Brokers, Object Service and Common Facilities are the three components of the OMA for which OMG is developing standards.

About OMG

OMG is the world's largest software development consortium with a membership of over 490 software vendors, software developers and end users. Established in 1989, its mission is to promote the theory and practice of object technology for the development of distributed computing systems. The goal is to provide a common architecture framework for object-oriented applications based on widely available interface specifications. OMG is headquartered in Framingham, Mass., USA, and has international marketing offices in the UK, Germany and Japan. For information on joining OMG or additional information, please contact OMG headquarters by phone at [phone], by fax at [phone], or by email at: info(at)omg.org.

CONTACT: Object Management Group

Kelley Lynn Kassa, 508/820-4300