Hewlett-Packard, Creator of the Standard Template Library, Validates
ObjectSpace's STL<ToolKit>, as the Best Implementation of New Standard by
Signing Significant Licensing Agreement

DALLAS, TX (Oct. 2, 1995) - ObjectSpace, Inc. announced today a licensing
agreement with Hewlett-Packard, the creator of the Standard Template
Library (STL), to provide ObjectSpace's STL<ToolKit> to the company for
internal product development and testing.

ObjectSpace, a leader in object-oriented technology, shipped 1,000 copies
of the STL<ToolKit> product, which is an enhanced version of the ANSI/ISO
standard for C++ programming language, to Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in
Palo Alto, California. The licensing agreement between Hewlett-Packard and
ObjectSpace also includes a comprehensive technical support and product
upgrade program.

"We are delighted that one of the market leaders in the computer industry
has recognized the quality of ObjectSpace's C++ class library offerings,"
said Graham Glass, president and co-founder of ObjectSpace. "We are
excited that a larger section of the development community can benefit
from Alex Stepanov and Meng Lee's work through the STL<ToolKit>."

STL, originally developed by Stepanov and Lee of Hewlett-Packard
Laboratories, is a powerful, efficient and flexible set of reusable
collections and algorithms. It was accepted in July 1994 by the ANSI/ISO
Standards Committee as a part of the emerging international standard for
the C++ programming language. HP placed its implementation of STL in the
public domain as a service to the programming community. ObjectSpace, a
strong proponent of standards within software development, produced an
enhanced version of STL, allowing more developers the ability and
opportunity to utilize the standard.

ObjectSpace's STL<ToolKit> - one of the first cross-platform commercial
implementations of STL - offers multi-thread extensions, including read
and write locking, and is the only version of STL that is compatible with
cfront-based compilers, opening the door to the standard for those
developers. STL<ToolKit> is available on a wide variety of platforms,
including Windows(TM) and UNIX(TM). STL<ToolKit> starts at $149 per user.

STL<ToolKit> cross-platform availability allows users the choice of
Windows, UNIX or OS/2 environments. ObjectSpace's STL<ToolKit> is
available for an introductory price of $149.

"ObjectSpace is committed to the STL design approach and has incorporated
the new ANSI standard in our new product offerings, including
Systems<ToolKit>, " Glass said. "Its state-of-the-art design leapfrogs
competitors in terms of ANSI standards compliance, efficiency, flexibility
and features."

The increased functionality of the STL<ToolKit>, the capability for users
to run the product on cfront-based C++ compilers and the user
documentation that includes 250 examples were reasons Hewlett- Packard
chose ObjectSpace, Glass said.

Another advantage of STL<ToolKit> is that it offers comprehensive support
for multi-thread development. STL<ToolKit> includes cross-platform classes
for threads, semaphores, and object locking. STL<ToolKit> uses a
template-based approach to object locking that allows developers to read
and/or write lock any object without having to write or inherit from any
additional classes, and may be used to control access to any STL
collection in a multi-thread environment.

The STL<ToolKit> includes the following features:

 * Cross-platform multi-thread support
 * comprehensive tutorial and class catalog
 * hundreds of examples
 * rigorous test suite
 * fully commented source code

ObjectSpace's STL<ToolKit> is ported to most of the common UNIX compilers,
including: HP, SUN ver.3, SUN ver.4 and GNU. Additionally, the
STL<ToolKit> is ported to the popular PC compilers such as Borland C++ and
Microsoft's Visual C++.

WHAT IS STL?

STL is an elegant and comprehensive framework of containers, iterators and
algorithms that goes well beyond traditional container collections and
similar product offerings already available. In addition to including
standard collections such as vectors, lists, deques, sets, maps, stacks,
queues, STL offers the following advantages:

* Unlike other vendor's proprietary class libraries, it is an accepted
  ANSI/ISO C++ standard. Components based on STL are therefore well
  positioned for long-term interoperability.

* It is conceptually simple and fundamentally efficient. STL
  collections are often faster than their hand-coded C equivalents.

* The use of generic algorithms allows new algorithms to be added
  without modification or recompilations of the original STL source
  code.

"This (HP's STL Library) may be the single greatest contribution to the C++
standards effort," said Bjarne Stroustrup, the designer of C++ and a
researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories. "The inclusion of STL into the
standard library remedies a serious problem by providing for the first
time a set of container classes and fundamental algorithms to go with
them. It provides programmers with a large, systematic, clean, formally
sound, comprehensible, elegant and efficient framework."

For more information, contact sales@objectspace.com

ObjectSpace, Inc.
14881 Quorum Drive, Suite 400
Dallas TX 75240
fax: (214) 663-3959, voice: (214) 934-2496
email: info@objectspace.com
 
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