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Special Features:

OMG TO STANDARDIZE ASSET ANALYSIS, DISCOVERY, MANAGEMENT

Members of the Object Management Group (OMG) met in London from Nov. 17-21 at a meeting sponsored by Compuware Corp, klocwork, Thales and AMS. The gathering combined standards work, five information days and conferences, an educational series of six tutorials and vendor software demonstrations.

Software Asset Discovery And Control Standards

By analyzing, categorizing and managing existing software assets, an enterprise can prolong the usefulness of its existing software functionality and maximize the return on its software investment. In London, OMG members started work on two new standards in this area. First, a Special Interest Group (SIG) working on architecture-driven modernization issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to standardize a fundamental model (in technical terms, a metamodel) for analysis of existing software functionality.

In a separate effort, members issued a proposed Reusable Asset Specification Request for Comment. The RAS defines a standard way to package reusable software assets. This is an important part of an Asset-based Development process, promoting the reuse of software development assets across an enterprise. For information, send e-mail to rasrfc@omg.org.

Infrastructure Standards Work

OMG members also issued RFPs initiating work on two new infrastructure standards. Small-footprint devices such as cell phones and the next generation of software-defined radios will benefit from a new standard model and set of interfaces for global positional and navigational data. Large, scalable CORBA systems will benefit from standard interfaces for load monitoring and balancing. Any company may join OMG and respond to the RFPs for these new standards; for information and deadlines send e-mail to info@omg.org.

Members finished evaluations and started final adoption votes for two new standards: Lightweight versions of the CORBA naming, event and time services will serve resource-constrained embedded systems, and a UML profile for Quality of Service and fault tolerance will facilitate modeling of Real-time and high-reliability environments.

Information Days, Workshops And FIPA Meeting

The C4I Domain Task Force hosted a Coalition Day featuring a keynote by Peter Verga, principal deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Defense. The Security SIG hosted an information day entitled "Security by Design: Securing System-Oriented Architectures." OMG's Model Integrated Computing Platform SIG hosted an information day on "Model Integrated Computing for Embedded, Real-Time Systems."

Three outside organizations located workshops or meetings at the OMG venue: EDA (Exhibitions) Ltd, in association with OMG and the Institution of Electrical Engineers Professional Networks for Embedded and Real-Time Systems, sponsored a one-day workshop on "Developing Distributed Embedded Systems for Mission-Critical Applications"; The Component-Based Software Engineering Network hosted a three-day workshop entitled "State of the Art and Future Directions"; and the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents met alongside OMG for three days.

Tutorials

Six half-day tutorials covered OMG's most popular specifications: Dr. Jon Siegel of OMG presented a "Survey of OMG Specifications"; John Hogg of IBM Software Group spoke on "Brass Bubbles: An Overview of UML 2.0 and Model Driven Architecture (MDA)"; Cory Casanave, president of Data Access Technologies, presented "Applying MDA to Enterprise and Government Collaboration"; David Frankel, president of David Frankel Consulting, taught "Using Model Driven Architecture to Manage Metadata"; William Henry, director of professional services for IONA Technologies, presented "CORBA in the Enterprise"; and Bill Beckwith, CEO of Objective Interface Systems, taught "Real-time CORBA."

Sponsor Presentations And Software Demonstrations

Three meeting sponsors addressed the attendees: Wim Bast, senior software architect for Compuware Corp, spoke on "The MDA Reference Model"; Djenana Campara, CTO of klocwork Inc, spoke on "Architecture-Driven Modernization (or how to get your teenage software to behave)"; and Robert C. Brown, director of Business Innovation for AMS, spoke on "OMG and Air Traffic Management Systems: CARDAMOM -­ a new generation of OMG standard middleware." Sixteen vendors demonstrated their implementations of OMG specifications.

Board Endorses Three New Standards, Holds Election

Following member evaluation and endorsement, a vote by OMG's Board of Directors makes a new standard official. During the meeting week, OMG's BoD voted to create three new standards. Two extend the CORBA Component Model (CCM): One defines a lightweight version for real-time and embedded component applications; the other defines a UML profile for component modeling. A third new standard allows developers to add their own network communications to specially designed real-time object request brokers in a standard way.

OMG's board also elected five members to three-year terms. New to the board is Ben Calloni of Lockheed-Martin. Re-elected were Dale Fuller of Borland, Sean Baker of IONA, Scott Markel of LION Bioscience and Bill Smith of Sun Microsystems.

Next Meeting; Links To Additional Information

OMG members will meet next in Anaheim, Calif., during the week of Feb. 2-6, 2004. Interested non-members may attend as observers; for an invitation, see www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/guest.htm. OMG's home page is www.omg.org.

Information about the MDA is collected at www.omg.org/mda. All OMG specifications may be downloaded free of charge from www.omg.org/technology/documents/specifications.htm.

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