Redwood City, CA Ð NeXT's joint-development effort with Object Design (ODI) is big news for both independent software vendors and custom-application developers.
ObjectStore 2.0 Ð once ported to NeXTSTEP Ð will provide a powerful, yet easy-to-use, system for storing and sharing data among different users and applications.
With a promised 1992 ship date, the initial fruits of the relationship should appear next summer, with even bigger payoffs in '94 or '95, assuming NeXT delivers on its promise to incorporate persistent-object storage into NeXTSTEP.
Object Design is the dominant player in the persistent-object database market (see story below). These databases give programmers a way to store Objective-C, C++, or Smalltalk objects directly from an application without having to first save objects as text in files. Object-oriented (OO) databases manage version control on an object-by-object, rather than document-by-document, level. As a result, different users can easily edit the same document at the same time, create multiple versions, and then merge the versions back into a single whole.
ObjectStore is critical to the NeXT, said Thomas M. Atwood, ODI's founder: Fortune 1000 companies building object-oriented applications need a programming environment, GUI builder, and object-oriented database. ODI approached NeXT, suggesting that pairing the strongest of GUI-builders with the strongest of databases would be an unstoppable combination. NeXT agreed, and the companies decided to embark on a multiyear, multimillion dollar development effort.
Claiming 40 percent of the OO-database market, Object Design's customers are largely CAD and CASE developers and include IBM, which uses ObjectStore to hold integrated circuit designs.
Pricing is not set, but Atwood suggested that a NeXTSTEP developer's kit for independent software vendors will cost $1500 to $3000.