Object Management Group to Meet in Helsinki, Finland, September 30 - October 4, 2002; OMG Members to Advance UML 2.0 Modeling and Other Standards, Hold Tutorials.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NEEDHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 11, 2002

Members of the Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)) will convene in Helsinki, Finland from September 30 until October 4, 2002, at a meeting sponsored by HM & V Research Ltd, BEA Systems Oy, and Nokia, where they will work the organization's technology adoption process, attend tutorials, view demonstrations of products implementing OMG specifications, and attend a co-located meeting.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) Major Revision 2.0

At this meeting, members will advance more than 18 new standards through the various stages of OMG's technology adoption process. The upgrade of the UML specification to Release 2.0, with contributions from 35 member companies in four separate parts, is OMG's most visible current adoption effort. In Helsinki, the Analysis and Design (AD) Platform Task Force (PTF) will review and comment on revised submissions to all four parts of the new standard, advancing each towards its final adoption scheduled around the end of this year or early next. Revised submissions towards upgrading the MetaObject Facility (MOF) to Release 2.0 will also be evaluated at the meeting.

Industry-specific Standards

Industry-specific Task Forces meet at OMG to standardize software in their domain, specified either in the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) or OMG's industry standard middleware, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). At this meeting, the Business Enterprise Integration (BEI) Domain Task Force (DTF) will evaluate proposed standards for extensions to UML for Workflow Process Definition. These extensions will form the basis for future specifications of workflow in MDA directly. The Life Sciences Research DTF will review a proposed Chemical Sample Management Facility, and the Telecommunications DTF will evaluate base models to represent Super Distributed Objects, the category of ubiquitous network computers that includes PDAs, mobile telephones, and Internet appliances, in MDA-based applications.

Computing Infrastructure Standards

OMG's Middleware and Related Services (MARS) PTF adopts specifications for CORBA and other middleware. In Helsinki, the MARS PTF will evaluate seven proposed new specifications: The first will define interoperability between CORBA and Web Services through a bridge to SOAP and WSDL. Another will standardize deployment and configuration of distributed applications, concentrating on the CORBA component model. Four new specifications concentrate in realtime and high-performance computing: One defines data distribution pathways for realtime systems; another will allow programmers to add new communications protocols to real-time object request brokers (ORBs); a third standardizes load balancing and performance monitoring facilities for large scalable ORBs; and the last in this group maps the standard CORBA protocol GIOP to the telecommunications standard SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) for use in next generation mobile telecommunications networks. A revised C language mapping completes the work of the MARS PTF.

This meeting description is based on preliminary information. OMG Task Forces will finalize their agendas for the meeting during the week of September 16th and post them at www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/agendas.htm.

Meeting Tutorials and Presentations

Attendees will learn about OMG's specifications at a series of half-day tutorials held throughout the week. One tutorial will be a survey of all the group's specifications from the UML(TM) through CORBA to the MDA, while another will concentrate on the suite of specifications grouped together as CORBA 3. The OMG tutorial program provides a foundation of knowledge that prepares new members to participate in the group's many standardization processes, and to understand the group's suite of standards in diverse areas of computing.

This meeting is sponsored by HM & V Research Ltd, BEA Systems Oy, and Nokia. On Wednesday afternoon, October 2, representatives from these three companies will speak on their plans for OMG technology.

Software Demonstrations and Co-located Meetings

Software demonstrations are another important meeting activity. Typically, about ten member companies demonstrate software products or services that implement OMG specifications. In addition, this meeting will feature a multi-vendor workshop and demonstration of XMI-based interoperability of UML modeling tools.

Industry groups frequently co-locate their meetings with OMG. In Helsinki, the OMG and ITCM (www.itcm.org) will co-sponsor a major invitation-only seminar on Crisis Management and Information Technology. In addition, ISO SC7/WG19 will co-locate their meeting to advance their standards in Open Distributed Processing and Modeling Languages, in conjunction with OMG's work on specifications including UML and the MDA.

Links to Meeting Information

OMG's home page is www.omg.org. The meeting schedule, and links to agendas and registration for members appear at www.omg.org/registration/registration-tc.htm, and for guests at www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/guest.htm. Information about the MDA is collected at www.omg.org/mda. All OMG specifications may be downloaded free of charge from www.omg.org/technology/documents/specifications.htm.

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. Based on the Model Driven Architecture (MDA), 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. OMG's well-established CORBAservices and industry-specific standards are being re-issued under the MDA in many popular middleware environments. OMG domain (industry-specific) standards cover vertical markets including healthcare, telecommunications, biotechnology, transportation and a dozen other areas. The OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, with a U.S. government representative in Washington, DC, and international marketing offices in Japan, the UK, 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]. The OMG provides current information and services for distributed enterprise computing through The Information Brokerage(R) service on the World Wide Web at www.omg.org and www.corba.org.

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