The reference release 1.0 of CommonPoint that Taligent Inc released to its trio of investors includes a cpConstructor interface builder, the first tool in Taligent’s CommonPoint Developer Series (CI No 2,679). CpProfessional, formerly know as TalDE, the development environment, will come out in a beta release next quarter and ship by the end of the year. It will come with incremental compile and link facilities, automated builds, customisable class and framework browsing, hyperlink navigation and team programming support. IBM Corp was the first investor to announce CommonPoint for AIX; the other two, Apple Computer Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co, are due to make their own CommonPoint announcements. Apple has already demonstrated the software on early versions of its Copland System 8 Mac OS microkernel. CommonPoint implementations on non-investor systems are under way; Taligent says beta implementations for Windows NT will be ready by the end of this year, with production versions for either Windows95, or more likely, NT, set for the middle of next year. In view of the multiple microkernel efforts at its investors, and elsewhere, Taligent has abandoned plans to develop its own TalOS microkernel base. Tools Taligent used in the development, and incorporated into the CommonPoint beta release, TakeFive Software GmbH’s Sniff++ – C++ – graphical development system, Objective Software Technology Ltd’s Look! debugger, and the Poet Software Corp object database, are available for use with the investor and other releases of CommonPoint 1.0, but are not bundled. As well as adding some kernel extensions to AIX 4.1 to support its implementation of CommonPoint, IBM’s CommonPoint for AIX version 1.1 is a multi-user version of the object system and has new tools linking developer components. It uses IBM’s C Set++ C++ compiler, development system and OpenClass Library, and includes the CommonPoint Application System and cpConstructor interface builder. The releases are numbered 1.1 (Taligent’s reference platform is 1.0) in accordance with IBM nomenclature which sets first general releases as .1 products. IBM plans an OS/2 implementation by the end of the year using VisualAge C++ for development, and is currently fitting a server-oriented configuration on to OS/400. Indeed it has already shown the same CommonPoint class libraries running on AIX and OS/2 clients accessing OS/400 server resources. IBM has its corporate customer and independent software vendor groups actively promoting CommonPoint, and claims to have already knocked NeXTstep out of use at American Express Financial Advisors and Adamation Inc. Taligent claims to have British Airways Plc, Abacus Concepts Inc, Nisus Software Inc and MicroBurst Inc as other CommonPoint for AIX developers.
