From: spence_m@ociweb.com (Malcolm Spence)
To: <corbet@eklektix.com>
Subject: RE: high performance open source CORBA 2.2 ORB available on Linux with Commercial support 
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 12:00:19 -0500


12140 Woodcrest Executive Drive
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Press Release

Object Computing Inc. (OCI) announces the availability of commercial
products for The ACE ORB (TAO), an open source, real time, high performance,
implementation of CORBA 2.2.

The popular open source Linux operating system is among the platforms
supported.

St. Louis Mo. September 30, 1999:OCI announced today that it is accepting
orders for immediate shipment of CD-ROMs and documentation kits for TAO.
This highly rated object request broker (ORB) has been developed over the
last few years to meet the challenging needs of high-performance and
real-time distributed applications. It already has a large user base, and
this is expected to expand rapidly as OCI's commercial support model is
implemented. The hallmark of TAO is its conformance to standards, superior
efficiency, predictability scalability, wide platform support and absence of
license fees. Many of TAO's hundreds of users have been reluctant to
progress beyond the evaluation stage until they could be sure of quality
commercial support. This announcement meets that need. OCI's E-Commerce site
at www.theaceorb.com offers easy and fast ordering for customers from around
the world.

Dr. Moshiri the CEO of OCI commented that since OCI decided to support TAO
as an open source product several months ago there has been an explosion of
interest. "This is an exceptional time to enter the market with product," he
said. "Standards based, open source middleware can do a lot towards
encouraging open systems, especially in the case of TAO, which has undergone
extensive use and testing by industry. OCI has been developing
infrastructure software for large distributed OO applications since 1993.
This is a natural extension to our core competencies."

About TAO and ACE
TAO, an open source implementation of the Object Management Group's (OMG)
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) specification, was
developed by the Distributed Object Computing (DOC) Group at Washington
University in St. Louis under the direction of Dr. Douglas Schmidt. Dr.
Schmidt is an internationally recognized expert in patterns and framework
components for real-time middleware. Version 1.0 of TAO is designed to be
compliant with CORBA 2.2 and includes some aspects of CORBA 2.3. Although
initially targeted for real-time environments, TAO is also well suited for
general purpose environments where TAO provides better, more consistent
performance than the traditional "best effort" service of other ORBs. Thus,
all applications can benefit from the same characteristics that make TAO
attractive for real-time developers.

TAO's second generation ORB design, with its up front consideration of
real-time requirements, is particularly well suited for use in demanding
environments. Such considerations must include: avoiding end-to-end priority
inversion; maintaining upper bounds on latency and jitter; and providing
bandwidth guarantees. These combine to ensure predictable behavior. TAO
enables applications to obtain specified levels of what is called Quality of
Service (QoS). In addition, because TAO is flexible and open source, it is
also suitable for embedded application environments that typically demand
small footprint and low cost, as well as good performance.

Traditionally, the barrier to viable real-time CORBA has been that many
real-time challenges are associated with end-to-end system design aspects.
Challenges that transcend the layering boundaries traditionally associated
with CORBA.  TAO's design provides for the integration of network
interfaces, OS I/O subsystems, ORB, and middleware services, in order to
provide an end-to-end solution, should the developer require it.

TAO, by virtue of the underlying ACE (ADAPTIVE Communications Environment)
C++ framework, supports a wide range of platforms and operating systems. ACE
is a pioneering open source middleware framework that provides a rich set of
reusable C++ wrapper façades and components that encapsulate common
communication software tasks across many OS platforms.

ACE provides TAO with exceptional extensibility and the ability to span many
platforms. ACE mitigates the maintenance issues that normally arise when
trying to support multiple diverse operating system environments. ACE is a
critical layer in TAO's ladder of abstraction between the implementation of
the specifics of operating and communication systems and the high level of
abstraction afforded by CORBA. By leveraging ACE's abstraction layer at the
systems level, TAO's design is platform neutral and devoid of the
architectural biases that follow when the ORB design is targeted to specific
operating systems.

Supported Platforms
TAO runs on most major platforms, such as UNIX vendor variants and Win 32.
(It even runs on MVS Open Edition.). TAO also runs on Linux, FreeBSD and
NetBSD UNIX, all of which are free and provide developers with unusually
cost-effective options. Distributed applications written using CORBA are
usually easier to move from platform to platform. For real time environments
TAO supports the major RTOSs such as Lynx, VxWorks, and Chorus ClassiX (from
Sun). It is presently being tested on WindowsCE, the operating system
targeted at portable consumer embedded products.

OCI's initial double disk distribution on CD-ROM covers HP-UX, Solaris on
both SPARC and Intel, Linux and NT on Intel. It includes all source code,
test cases, examples, benchmark code, and an IDL compiler, as well as
binaries for various build configurations for the platforms noted. The
distribution features an easy to use installation program that enables
routine installations in10 to 20 minutes.

Documentation Set
TAO is a feature rich ORB providing seven standard CORBA services and two
additional services specifically designed to meet those real time needs that
are not currently addressed in the CORBA specification. Developers will find
they can now take full advantage of these features with this extensive
documentation package. Users who are familiar with CORBA will find getting
started with the TAO quite easy. As they begin to understand TAO's depth and
configurability, they will appreciate its conformance to the CORBA standard
and its ability to address complex performance and scalability issues.

About Object Computing Inc.,
Object Computing Inc. (OCI) is a privately held software engineering
company. OCI was founded in 1993 with a commitment to object oriented
technology. Today OCI provides software systems consulting, product
development, and educational services to progressive corporations across the
United States in the Aerospace, Finance, Healthcare and telecommunication
market segments. The St. Louis based OCI Education Center has one of the
most extensive object technology and Java training curricula in the Mid
West. OCI has a significant presence in Phoenix as well as St. Louis, where
its corporate headquarters are located. For more information see our web
site http://www.ociweb.com.

Contact: 	OCI - Malcolm Spence Director of Business Development
			Phone (314) 579-0066	Email - spence_m@ociweb.com

Information on TAO: may also be obtained from Washington University's web
site www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt.

Some benchmarking information comparing commercial ORBs with TAO is
available from a user site, www.beust.com/virginie/Benchmarks/.

An active newsgroup about TAO is available via www.deja.com under the forum
comp.soft-sys.ace.