Inside The Open Group A Report on Emerging Technology and Standards

Introducing The Open Group

In its debut installment, our newest The OSF/1 is an column examines in depth the charter implementation of the X/Open Single Specification. of The Open Group. The OSF Research Institute offers operating system technology for high-per- formance computing and a modular microkernel. These technologies have been incorporated by several companies into defense-related and commercial prod- ucts. In addition, the Research Institute is he consolidation of Open Soft- OSF has a suite of standards-based open a leader in World Wide Web research and ware Foundation (OSF) and systems technologies, and its research the integration of DCE technology into TX/Open Co. under a new umbrel- organization is experienced in coordinat- the Web. Currently, the Research Institute la organization, to be known as The Open ing industry-wide collaborative research has released for general use several ports Group, was officially announced at the and development projects. X/Open has a of the Java programming language and a UniForum Conference in February. As process for developing and delivering set of Web browser enhancements. with any such event, the announcement open systems product specifications based X/Open brings to the new organiza- was merely the tip of an iceberg. Inau- on worldwide industry consensus. These tion gurating this monthly column, we’ll talk product specifications are backed by the the UNIX specifications and brand; about what OSF and X/Open bring to the strength of the X/Open brand—a vendor’s the specifications and brand; newly formed group and what you can guarantee of a product’s conformance to standardized DCE specifications; expect to see from The Open Group in open systems specifications. The consol- CDE specifications and branding the coming months. idation of the two organizations will under development; The Open Group is chartered to ensure that the push and pull of new the X/Open Federated Naming speci- enhance the speed and effectiveness of research and development against stan- fications; open systems technology development dardization efforts works to the benefit of and ongoing work in standardization and the development and adoption of the open systems industry and its cus- of Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), open systems specifications. Much of the tomers. distributed systems management and impetus for its formation came from the The technologies OSF brings to the other areas. OSF and X/Open user organizations, new organization are well-known among which have consolidated to form the suppliers and purchasers of open systems. Going Forward Open Group Customer Council (OGCC) The OSF/Motif graphical user interface Under the auspices of The Open Group, of more than 300 member companies. is the worldwide IEEE standard user inter- X/Open and OSF will coordinate their William Estrem of 3M Corp., OGCC face for open systems. Motif runs on vir- efforts to focus on three strategic areas: cochair, says, “With the creation of a tually all computing platforms and func- open systems platform development, dis- strong user organization, the open sys- tions similarly to Windows. tributed computing and the World Wide tems industry is saying that the require- Development of the Common Desktop Web. ments of the business marketplace will Environment (CDE), of which Motif is a The open systems platform is a set of be the most important factor driving tech- component, is being coordinated by OSF. specifications and technology implemen- nology development and specifications.” The OSF Distributed Computing Envi- tations supporting the deployment of off- Besides the commitment of their user ronment (DCE) forms the foundation for the-shelf and custom applications. This members, OSF and X/Open each bring a the development and use of distributed platform is geared toward enterprise mis- distinctive and complementary set of applications in multiplatform distributed sion-critical server systems, departmental strengths to the combined organization. computing environments. server systems and high-performance graphical workstations. The Open Group By Amy Auman already owns and will continue to evolve the major interface specifications and tech-

48 UniForum’s ITSolutions APRIL 1996 nology implementations of the open sys- net to one that is secure, predictable and ized specifications for a secure Web serv- tems platform. These specifications and linked to enterprise distributed comput- er and for Java. technologies include ing; in other words, one that can support The Open Group’s goal is to foster the X/Open Single UNIX Specification; commercial business applications. Under collaborative efforts toward delivery of X/Open SQL; development now are ports of the Java the specifications and technology need- the X/Open speci- technology to additional platforms, inte- ed for successful, open enterprise com- fication; grations of DCE technology with the puting. The Open Group aims to stay the X/Open Motif Toolkit API; World Wide Web, and a set of tools to focused on the issues and technology of the X/Open DCE and NFS specifica- enhance the utility of the Web for indi- greatest importance to the user commu- tions; viduals and workgroups. Slightly further nity. The OGCC will help to ensure this and the X/Open Common Desktop down the road, The Open Group will focus and invites all member companies Environment specifications. release personal browsing assistants for to become active participants. IT Over the next two years, The Open the Web and enhanced integration of Group will deliver open systems platform DCE and the Web. When the related Amy Auman is manager of marketing security specifications, an application technologies are sufficiently mature, The communications programs for OSF. She branding program and standard specifi- Open Group also will release standard- can be reached at [email protected]. cations for the next generation (64-bit) open operating system, CDE and Java. In the research area, The Open Group will focus on a scalable operating system tech- Attention nology for parallel computing that adheres to open systems platform specifications; All Unix and Open Systems a fault-tolerant operating system kernel; and fault-tolerant servers and realtime User Groups! computing clusters. Near-term develop- ment plans call for major releases of the CDE and Motif technologies, as well as UniForum is often called by people looking to join user ports of the Java language to new systems groups in their area. We’d like to steer them in your and standardized complex text (non-West- ern language) layout capabilities for the direction! CDE and Motif technologies. The Open Group will focus on sup- Give us the following information and we’ll send port for enterprise distributed computing prospective members your way: through the definition of standard proto- cols and services and a “federation Name of the User Group approach.” This approach recognizes that Membership Director or Main Contact Name the diversity of existing implementations Address, City, State, Country, Zip/Postal Code rules out the adoption of a single strategic solution and sets out to manage rather E-mail and World Wide Web addresses than eliminate the diversity. Specific deliv- erables over the next two years include E-mail this information to [email protected] or send by a DCE 1.2 implementation, an X/Open fax to Erni Wade at (408) 986-1645. It’s that easy! Federated Naming implementation and specifications for ODBC and distributed systems management. The Open Group will focus on assist- ing the transition from the current Inter-

APRIL 1996 UniForum’s ITSolutions 49