🚀 go-pugleaf

From: Owner-OS2News@teamos2.org

Subject: OS2News: TowerEiffel to be SOM & OpenDoc Enabled for OS/2 and AIX

For More Information Contact:

May duBignon, Tower Technology Corporation
   512-452-9455 or may@twr.com
Stephanie Rasmussen, IBM Media Relations
   800-354-0978 or srasmussen@vnet.ibm.com

TOWER TECHNOLOGY TO DEVELOP SOM & OPENDOC ENABLED VERSIONS OF TOWEREIFFEL
FOR OS/2 AND AIX

Austin, Texas  --  February 19, 1996  --  Tower Technology Corporation, a
leading international provider of Eiffel(TM) development tools and related
educational/consulting services, announces that it has entered into agreement
with the IBM Corporation to develop SOM(TM) and OpenDoc(TM) enabled commercial
versions of their TowerEiffel(TM) flagship development system for OS/2(TM) and
AIX(TM). Under terms of the agreement Tower will develop and market the
product while IBM provides Tower with technical and marketing support.

Tower specializes in the utilization of engineering and object-oriented
approaches for developing complex scalable systems. When released, software
developers creating distributed object-oriented applications for OS/2 and AIX
will have a robust and powerful Eiffel development environment at their
disposal. They will be able to exploit an object- oriented language and tool
set specifically developed for designing and implementing complex scalable
systems.

TowerEiffel is a superior quality product which has proven itself and is used
in the finance, telecommunication and engineering industries on a daily basis.
It is an object-oriented high-level application development system which
reduces the accidental complexity inherent in software development and
enhances the overall productivity of development resources. TowerEiffel is
available today on a wide range of platforms including: Windows NT, Windows
95, OS/2, HP/UX, SOLARIS, SunOS, SGI Iris, Linux, and Nextstep. The
TowerEiffel Development System excels in performance, openness, and native
platform support and consists of:

- Tower's proprietary implementation of an Eiffel 3 compiler which supports
  direct interoperability with C/C++.
- Tower's Integrated Development Environment.
- Programming Tools: Browsers with Class Inspector, Automated Documentation
  Generation, Team Development Support, Automated System Builds and more.
- Reusable software components for GUI, database, client / server, and
  numerical calculation support.
- A run-time which provides automatic memory management via user configurable
  garbage collection, and assertion and exception handling.
- Other key features include fast executable code, global system optimization,
  clear and precise error messages, built in support for testing and
  debugging, and serialization and persistence support.

Prerelease versions of the new products are scheduled to be available during
the second quarter 1996 with final release of both Standard and Professional
versions by year end. Organizations interested in early release program
information should contact Tower Technology directly at 512-452-9455 or
800-285-5124.

According to Madison Cloutier, Vice President of Marketing at Tower, "A SOM
and OpenDoc enabled version of TowerEiffel will provide a powerful and
flexible tool for developing multi-platform distributed applications. Using
the inherent strengths of the Eiffel language, companies will be able to
reduce the risks and costs associated with complex client / server systems.

"The addition of TowerEiffel support for SOM and OpenDoc will significantly
broaden developer choices for building complex, object-oriented applications,"
said Cynthia McFall, IBM Manager of Object Deployment. "Sophisticated tools in
the object environment are in high demand and Towers' Eiffel support of our
technology is a welcome addition to the market. In addition, this new
technology will further strengthen the open industry standards that IBM
promotes."

Eiffel is a non-proprietary object-oriented programming language which has
been gaining popularity among early adaptor object-oriented developers. Eiffel
is unique in that it is both a design specification and implementation
language. This allows developers to use a single language for defining
application architectures, developing reusable software components and
assembling those components. Because Eiffel has built in support for
correctness, it also provides a "Safety Net" for developers. This boosts the
overall productivity of teams developing complex systems which will have
frequent modifications and/or extensions during their life-cycle.

SOM provides a CORBA-compliant, language-neutral environment for defining,
manipulating, and releasing binary class libraries. SOM objects are
language-neutral in the sense that they can be implemented in one programming
language and used by applications or objects written in another programming
language. SOM also provides a CORBA-compliant Object Request Broker that
allows transparent access to objects that are distributed across address
spaces or different machines.

OpenDoc allows developers, large or small, to take a modular approach to
development and maintenance. Its component-software architecture makes the
design, development, testing, and marketing of integrated software packages
far easier and more reliable. Developers can make incremental improvements to
products without a complete revision cycle and can get those improvements to
users far more rapidly than is possible today.

SOM, OS/2 and AIX are trademarks or registered trademarks of International
     Business Machines

OPENDOC is a trademark or registered trademark of Apple Computers Inc.

TowerEiffel is a trademark or registered trademark of Tower Technology Inc.

Eiffel is a trademark of NICE, The Non-profit International Consortium for
     Eiffel, which maintains the Eiffel language standards.

Note: All other company names and product names are trademarks of the
     individual companies.