Microsoft Corp has resurrected OLE, the term everyone thought was supposed to disappear when ActiveX was conjured up. As executive VP Steve Ballmer confessed to our sister publications ClieNT server News recently, Microsoft has been carefully rethinking exactly what the word ActiveX means before it lets any independent standards body mess with one of its core technologies. Redmond’s never defined the scope of ActiveX except in the broadest of terms, but it was crystal clear at the time ActiveX was unveiled that it was intended to supplant OLE. The rub, of course, is that when Microsoft offered to turn ActiveX over to an independent standards group, the impression it gave was that it would turn over its crown jewels. Now the story’s changed, and some of the best stuff just ain’t ActiveX any more, it’s OLE once again – and Redmond didn’t promise to turn OLE over to any standards board, mind. Details of Redmond’s latest strategic shuffle have popped up practically under everyone’s nose – on Microsoft’s web site. A newly posted white paper says OLE is now an umbrella term to refer to the set of interfaces that are built on the Component Object Model (COM). A bit wishy-washy but the untitled white paper continues by saying OLE has evolved into a powerful system-level object architecture that includes services for all-inclusive data access, remote distribution of software components across heterogeneous platforms, robust transaction processing and large- group development. So, folks, it turns out that data objects – particularly as defined in OLE DB as released last week, software component distribution, transaction processing and groupware aren’t part of the open standards deal. Ditto for Redmond’s new Index Server search mechanism, which was once part of the ActiveX Server Framework that Microsoft dreamed up less than two months ago and isn’t anymore. A source in Redmond said lots of other bits and pieces are disappearing from under the ActiveX heading. As to what’s left to offer, Redmond’s not come up with a good definition of what ActiveX is these days, other than a statement that ActiveX represents a language neutral interface based on the ActiveX component technology. As near as we can make out what we’re talking about here is no more than the APIs that will let plug-in applications work with all the core functions that are back in the OLE lexicon. Meanwhile, the time and place of the ActiveX standardization meeting still hasn’t been revealed.
