CBDi Forum News - March 1998

ObjectShare Ships VisualWorks 3.0, The Portable, Dynamic Tool For Creating Distributed Applications. Components Provide Faster, Smaller Executables For Network Computing

March 16, 1998 - ObjectShare Inc the OO solutions provider for network computing, Monday announced the newest release of its award-winning VisualWorks product line.

This new release updates the entire product line which includes VisualWorks 3.0, VisualWave Developer 3.0, VisualWave Server 3.0, Distributed Smalltalk 5.7, Advanced Tools 3.0, DLL&C Connect 3.0, Database Connect 3.0, COM Connect 1.1 and ENVY/Developer 4.0 from Object Technology International. The VisualWorks product line delivers true portable applications and provides developers with powerful tools and components for creating scalable, dynamic applications.

VisualWorks 3.0 features enhanced parcel technology, which forms the basis of a new delivery architecture. Parcels allow deployment of very small base images that run much faster and with far more power. VisualWorks 3.0 allows update of applications without replacing the entire application, and enables the user to tailor the memory footprint of an application while it is running. Unlike other component technologies that require a complex hierarchy of components dependent on each other, parcels support are much more flexible and supportive. Partial loading is the ability to save code portions that depend on code in an unloaded parcel and automatically install it when the missing parcel is installed. This enables parcels to represent logical components that are easy to build and maintain.

New UI Features

VisualWorks 3.0 also delivers many other important enhancements. Foremost among these is the ability to create more compelling, flexible UI's with enhanced look and feel conformance. VisualWorks 3.0 adds the Windows95 Look Policy. The optional IC&C Widget Kit I and the inclusion of the VisualWorks Business Graphics Library which add powerful new UI components and dynamic business graphics to VisualWorks applications. VisualWorks now features extensible UI Feel Policies allowing developers to customise behaviour of the mouse and other use inputs.

New Library and Tool Enhancements

Visual Works 3.0 provides the foundation for a component centric Smalltalk, and improves the core libraries. Improvements were made to parcels so that strings and symbols are restored in a format that enables internationalisation. Prerequisites, parcel name, description, etc., are not restricted to the English character set. Exception handling support now conforms to the proposed ANSI-Smalltalk standard. To create more scalable applications, VisualWorks now includes the THAPI library so that API calls can be made on native OS threads. Enhanced tools for browsing and coding are teamed with parcels as a basis of the component architecture.

Pricing and Availability

VisualWorks 3.0 is shipping now. The remaining add-on products will be available in March, 1998. VisualWorks 3.0 is priced in the United States and Canada at $2,995 for desktop and $4,995 for UNIX-based systems. Special upgrade pricing is available to existing VisualWorks and VisualSmalltalk customers through March 31, 1998.

ObjectShare Inc. - www.objectshare.com