Analysis: Merger would be a Beans feast

Theories are circulating about the merger of key specifications for application components, which would help prevent Microsoft taking control of the object development market, writes Cath Everett.

Industry insiders believe that Javasoft?s Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) could be merged within the year with the forthcoming component model from the Object Management Group (OMG) standards body, which will be used in the building of applications based on the Corba object specification.

Keith Jaeger, head of international product development at tools company Synon, said he expected Corba and EJB to merge as early as the end of 1998, to prevent the industry splintering into two camps and handing the market to Microsoft.

?Given the vendors involved and the people with stakes in both camps, they have to sort it out, otherwise Microsoft?s common object model (COM) has too much of an opening,? he said.

The OMG has been working for some time on Corba Beans, a component specification based on the Corba object request broker (Orb). It has already issued a request for proposal (RFP) for components and scripting technology, with a submission deadline of June.

Oracle, Netscape, IBM and Sunsoft are among the vendors that have shown interest. The OMG is hoping they will offer Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) as their preferred choice.

But this would result in OMG wrestling with three overlapping development proposals. It has also issued RFPs for business object facilities (BOF), which are aimed at programmers wanting to add business logic to their components, and for the Component Framework Initiative, which is attempting to provide a unified model for the building of server-side components.

One source said: ?There?s a lot of confusion about how to bring them together and it will take a good year to sort out.?

The creation of a development standard is important if Corba is to flourish, particularly against COM, because writing applications that work with Orbs is widely recognised as an extremely difficult task.

The speculation about the merger of EJB and Corba further complicates the situation for those planning development strategies ? although it could simplify things in the future.

A source close to the OMG claimed that a merger was already taking place between the two specifications in the area of services.

?The Java Transaction Service (JTS) has the same functionality as the OMG?s Object Transaction Service (OTS). It would be entirely practical to build one transaction manager and include both interfaces,? he said.

The advantage of a merger for users, he believes, is that vendors would be able to ship products faster and more cheaply, instead of being pulled in two different directions.

?As for developers, the logic and security of both models are the same. This means they would need to learn two interfaces but only one model ? and the underlying model is the most difficult thing about development.

?It?s like trying to get to know a video recorder. The buttons may be different, but once you know how to programme one, you can programme them all.?

Colin Taylor, Sun?s business development manager for Java technologies, was more cautious. He did not believe that the two specifications would merge, but said they were complementary and would be used by different people for different reasons.

?EJB leverages Corba and a Corba client can access an EJB application. EJB does not replace Corba and it won?t in future, but Corba technology can be used by EJB developers,? he said.

OMG members differ in their views. Andrew Watson, the OMG?s architecture director, said the organisation hoped that EJB and Corba would move into close alignment because there was good synergy between thems. But he emphasised that Corba would always deal with multiple platforms and programming languages.

? Report by VNU Newswire