7 March 2000
Announcing CORVAL2 - European
Commission funded project for enhanced techniques for CORBAŽ validation
Total project budget over EUR 1.7
million
It was announced today in London,
England that the European Commission (EC) has entered into an agreement with six
organisations to support the CORVAL2 project. Enhanced Techniques for CORBA Validation
(CORVAL2) is a project whose objective is to develop new mechanisms for testing CORBA
technology. CORBA, the Common Object Request
Broker Architecture, is the Object Management Group's™ (OMG™) adopted
specification which allows applications to communicate with one another no matter where
they are located or who has designed them. The
total project budget is over EUR 1.7 million, with the EC funding accounting for about 50%
of this.
CORVAL2 is an EC Fifth Framework
Programme project, within the Information Societies Technology (IST) programme. The two year project is being carried out by:
The Open
Group™
(UK)
www.opengroup.org
GMD FOKUS
(Germany)
www.fokus.gmd.de
Eric Leach
Marketing
(UK)
www.ericleach.com
OMG
(USA)
www.omg.org
Fujitsu (ICL
IT Centre)
(Ireland)
www.itc.icl.ie
Object
Oriented Concepts
(Germany)
www.ooc.com
The specific objectives of CORVAL2
are to specify and develop new test development tools and test suites for CORBA 2.3, and
subsequently CORBA 3.0. The test suites will
be used to verify the correctness of ORB implementations by vendors and other OMG members;
to enhance The Open Group Brand programmes in support of CORBA technology; and to promote
the user acceptance of CORBA technology.
The tools and tests will be developed
by GMD FOKUS in Berlin, Germany and will build on The Open Group tests and tools created
for validating CORBA 2.1 in the original EC-supported CORVAL project. The new functionality being specified in CORBA 2.3
and CORBA 3.0, for which the project will create tests, includes The Portable Object
Adapter, Value Type Semantics, Enhancements to Interoperability Protocols, Asynchronous
Messaging, Persistent State Service Support and CORBA Components.
The enhanced test execution tools
will be the basis for the Open Brand for CORBA Programme.
The CORBA test suites will be used in the certification of products to be included
in the Brand Programme.
OMG is supporting the project, in
particular, the goals of improving interoperability through conformance of
implementations, with mechanisms to resolve specification issues and the general promotion
of the acceptance of CORBA Technology. CORVAL2's
project management is provided by The Open Group, which is also responsible for the Open
Brand Programme for CORBA, launched in May 1999.
The Open Group
The Open Group, a vendor and
technology-neutral consortium, is committed to delivering greater business efficiency by
bringing together buyers and suppliers of information systems to lower the cost and risks
associated with integrating new technology across the enterprise. Recognising that standards alone are insufficient,
The Open Group's mission is to deliver assurance of conformance to Open Systems Standards
through the testing and certification of suppliers' products.
GMD FOKUS
GMD FOKUS is a Research Institute for
Open Communications Systems. GMD's Testing,
Interoperability and Performance (TIP) Center is one of eight Competence Centers within
GMD FOKUS and employs 25 staff. GMD FOKUS is
in charge of the development of new CORBA test suites and of enhanced support tools for
test execution.
Eric Leach Marketing
Eric Leach Marketing (ELM) provides
marketing communication services to corporate software vendors and owns, designs and
manages leading edge corporate software conferences.
ELM has represented the UK interests of OMG since 1989.
OMG
With the support of its membership of
software vendors, software developers and end users, the OMG's CORBA is "The
Middleware That's Everywhere™". Since
1989, the OMG has been "Setting The Standards for Distributed Computing™"
through its mission to promote the theory and practice of object technology for the
development of distributed computing systems. OMG
also provides specifications for Object Oriented modelling with UML, MOF, and XMI.
Fujitsu (ICL ITCentre)
ICL Information Technology Centre is
located in Dublin, Ireland and is the European Development and Support Centre for leading
edge technologies including ObjectDirector, Fujitsu's CORBA compliant ORB.
ObjectDirector is a constituent part of INTERSTAGE (TM) (www.interstage.com), a rich and flexible distributed
object development and deployment environment.
Object Oriented Concepts
Object Oriented Concepts (OOC), with
offices in USA, Germany, Canada and Australia, is a leading provider of CORBA-compliant
technology. OOC's ORBacus™ product line
offers complete support for the latest CORBA standards in both C++ and Java, and a wide
spectrum of add-ons for components, management, e-commerce, telecom and security.
For further information:
Or contact:
Eric Leach
Eric Leach
Marketing Ltd
Tel: +44
(0)20 8758 7587
Fax: +44
(0)20 8758 7517
Email:eric_leach@compuserve.com