As the competition hots up to shape object-oriented technology, Lotus Development Corp and Sybase Inc are pooling resources to develop an environment to support distributed applications for client-server computing. Computer Systems News reports that the project, code-named Comet, is to develop a repository-oriented database applications strategy. This will involve a graphical, windowing development environment with strong hooks to third-party, object-oriented languages and databases, as well as a data dictionary and repository to track data elements in a distributed environment and provide connectivity to IBM’s AD/Cycle and third-party software engineering tools. It appears that neither Sybase, nor Lotus, are volunteering to develop their own object-oriented applications or database, but want to provide the client-server development environment for those companies that are. The paper quotes Sybase’s executive vice president Robert Epstein as saying that AD/Cycle is an approach if you are mainframe-centric. He goes on to add that client-server computing will need a different type of repository and software engineering technology than any that has yet been developed.
