Hewlett-Packard Co has unrolled its long-term plan to bridge the worlds of procedural coding and object development with the launch of a Distributed SoftBench program. The move precedes the introduction of Hewlett- Packard’s anticipated CORBA 2-compliant ORB-Plus agent, which is based upon the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment. Hewlett-Packard will use ORB-Plus to provide full object interoperability between its Distributed Smalltalk and SoftBench development systems, though there is much work to be done to get the environments to CORBA 2.0-readiness. The idea is to provide a way of using objects for development that is independent of the language. First in the scheme are enhanced versions of the SoftBench application development tool set, which come with some basic distributed functionality. The expected SoftBench 4.0 comes in guises for C, C++ and Cobol, Cobol/C and Cobol/C++. Hewlett-Packard is gradually moving tools from the more advanced distributed development environment, Distributed Smalltalk, an implementation of ParcPlace System Inc’s VisualWorks, to SoftBench, beginning with a distributed debugger, though components such as an Interface Definition Language code generator are lacking. Like other SoftBench releases, 4.0 uses SoftBench Framework to provide basic messaging for 80-odd tools currently available for use under it. There have been some minor changes to the release: Hewlett-Packard says 4.0 is integrated with its SynerVision/ChangeVision process management software; it is an implementation of the UIM/X interface builder; and a range of configuration management packages. Enhancements to C and C++ SoftBench 4.0 includes a new graphical performance tool that is meant to identify bottlenecks in an application under development. Hewlett-Packard says the program generates profile reports at function and statement levels in a report window that can be printed to a file. There are three static analysis tools that use colours and shapes in graphical displays to depict code components and their relationships, including functions, classes and files. A criticism of previous SoftBench iterations was that they could not handle large amounts of code at one time. Hewlett-Packard says version 4.0 performs at up to six times faster then previous versions, depending on the type of query, and can work on up to 1m lines of code at a time. The C and C++ versions come with a debugger that has been re-integrated with the Hewlett-Packard distributed debugging environment and is common across Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems Inc systems that run SoftBench. Version 4.0 is also tightly integrated with Pure Software Inc’s Purify run-time error and memory leak detection tool.
Object access to Distributed Computing services
There are links to Hewlett-Packard DCE/9000, OODCE/9000 and the Odapter data store, providing C++ developers with object access to Distributed Computing Environment services, a new interface, tear off menus plus concurrent network user licence. Cobol/C++ SoftBench includes Micro Focus Plc’s Cobol compiler, Cobol Animator debugger and Profiler performance analyser. Hewlett-Packard says it will add support for Taligent Inc and Rogue Wave Software Inc frameworks and libraries to increase the number of objects available to developers, and plans to enhance graphical editing and application design rule-checking facilities. Taligent’s frameworks will be added first, then the Taligent libraries, to create a merged set of development tools. Softbench 4.0 for HP-UX is out now and is priced, with a compiler, at from $2,400 for C, $5,500 for C++ and $8,000 for Cobol/C++. Solaris 2.3 versions will ship next month from $1,400 for C and $3,500 for C++. Prices are down by up to 35% on previous releases. Upgrades will be available at from $400 for C and $800 for C++ versions until the end of the year. Hewlett-Packard is also offering those upgrade prices as trade-in prices for CenterLine Software Inc’s CodeCenter or ObjectCenter, Sun Sparcworks 3.0 or SunPro Workshop and Lucid Inc’s Energize users
to move to SoftBench 4.0. Hewlett-Packard claims 27,000-odd SoftBench users. The Distributed Object Management Facility, developed in conjunction with Sun Microsystems Inc, is a component of Hewlett-Packard’s forthcoming ORB-Plus CORBA 2.0-compliant object broker. The static/dynamic binding technology it uses is similar to IBM Corp’s Distributed Systems Object Model and is being used only for evaluation purposes until the Object Group’s CORBA 2.0 technology is decided. Hewlett-Packard says it is easier to develop ORB-Plus based on what the Object Group decides, rather than trying to retrofit or swap pieces of technology put in place ahead of time. – William Fellows
