Dallas, Texas firm ObjectSpace Inc, founded at the beginning of 1992 to sell consulting and training services for C++ and SmallTalk, is now dipping its toe into the products market with the release of four object-oriented pieces of software. Of the four, ObjectSockets, ObjectMetrics, ObjectSystems and ObjectCatalog, the last one is the most ambitious, while the first two products in the roll-out are niche ones, arising from where the company’s work in training and consultancy has enabled it to spot gaps in the market. Thus ObjectSockets gives access to TCP/IP for object-based programmers using Digitalk Inc’s Smalltalk, because that was something ObjectSpace’s consultancy customers were looking for and could not find in an existing product. It costs $700 per user. The point of ObjectMetrics is to enable programmers to gather statistics on object developments in a similar way to those collected from traditional programs, and the company has integrated the tool with both Smalltalk and Envy to help developers reduce source code maintenance, identify problem classes, track the development of classes and contribute to a corporate metrics repository. ObjectMetrics is $600 per user. ObjectSystems, priced at $875 per user, is a C++ framework for cross-Unix systems development and provides an object-oriented layer between the application and Unix to hide the details of difficult-to-use system calls, error detection and cryptic flags. It supports a range of Interprocess Communications mechanisms and is compatible with the Tools.h++ toolkit from Rogue Wave Inc, one of its main competitors in the framework market. Finally, ObjectCatalog, which has been built using Visual Works, is intended to provide a corporate repository for different information types, including objects to help control the process of locating and reusing software components when building object systems. ObjectCatalog was announced at the recent Oopsla event in Portland, Oregon, but its pricing has not yet been finalised. The range of products are as yet contributing very announced at the recent Oopsla event in Portland, Oregon, but its pricing has not yet been finalised. The range of products are as yet contributing very little in the way of revenue to ObjectSpace, but company president Graham Glass is confident that by this time next year, product revenue will be bringing in virtually half of the company’s revenue. Glass – an Englishman who used to teach at the University of Texas and who co-founded ObjectSpace with native Texan David Norris – is also confident that the privately-held, 30-strong company is on a steep growth curve, with two further products due next year.
