OMG Announces Distributed Document Component Facility

March 21, 1996 -- Framingham, MA -- Object Management Group (OMG) is
pleased to announce the adoption of the Distributed Document Component
Facility (DDCF) as part of the Object Management Architecture known as
CORBAfacilities. The adoption of the Distributed Document Component
Facility will unite client and server communities through a common
architecture and extend OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture
(CORBA) to the desktop.

CORBAfacilities are high-level application services that provide uniform
interfaces and semantics used to build well-formed applications in a
distributed object environment and developed on a CORBA-conformant Object
Request Broker (ORB). These facilities are often shared across multiple
applications, and may be common to many industries or vertical domains.

The Distributed Document Component Facility will enable the creation of
component software that supports shareable and customizable compound
documents across heterogeneous systems. This enables repackaging of
monolithic applications (in which a single software package is responsible
for all of its documents' contents) into distributed application
components that can plug and play together, not only on the same desktop
but across heterogeneous networks.

"The DDCF unites both client and server communities through a common
architecture, realized through the most efficient client/server middleware
specifications available today," said Christopher Stone, President and CEO
of the Object Management Group. "Now, an open, extensible component
marketplace, based on industry consensus, can finally become a reality."

ABOUT THE DDCF

The complete Distributed Document Component Facility is based on OpenDoc
technology and consists of a Compound Presentation Facility and a Document
Interchange Facility. It is the first CORBAfacility to be adopted by the
OMG. Although OpenDoc is the basis for the DDCF specification, the
submitters of the specification revised the technology to include critical
support for CORBAservices and the OMG Interface Definition Language -- the
interface for CORBA.

"OpenDoc is an implementation (product) of what OMG has adopted as a
specification," explains Chris Stone. "We expect many companies to build
upon this DDCF spec as companies did in the past and continue to do with
our CORBA spec."

The Distributed Document Component Facility fully extends CORBA to the
desktop and adds two critical enhancements to the Object Management
Architecture:

The Compound Presentation Facility will provide a framework for the sharing
and subdividing of a display window into multiple parts independent of any
window systems or rendering model.

The Document Interchange Facility will provide a framework for the storage
and interchange of data objects, and will specifically support facilities
like the Compound Presentation Facility, and CORBAservices such as Naming
and Event Management.

Today, "component" buying is simply an additional distribution mechanism
for vendors to move software. There are no certification processes or
standard interfaces to enable the required interoperability. The Object
Management Architecture with its OMG Interface Definition Language and
CORBA, coupled with standard component facilities will allow the industry
to build, register, and distribute Platform Independent Components for the
first time.

For Additional Information and Related Press Releases:

  IBM's Club OpenDoc - http://www.software.ibm.com/clubopendoc/
  Apple's OpenDoc site - http://www.opendoc.apple.com/
  CI Labs - http://www.cilabs.org/
 
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