December 5, 1996 7:00 PM ET

Object Design launches program for developing database extensions
By Juan Carlos Perez

Object Design Inc. next week will launch a program that offers training, support, licenses and a software development kit to third-party vendors for developing extensions for its object database. Copying a model employment by the major relational database companies for adding data type support to their products, Object Design has signed up 12 vendors for the Object Manager Developer Program. Currently in the fold are Verity Inc. (text search), Virage Inc. (image) and Dimension X Inc. (VRML). The three companies are among the dozen that will create Object Managers for the ObjectStore object-oriented DBMS, said officials of the Burlington, Mass., company. Object Managers are software modules that let the ObjectStore manage complex data. Object Design already provides Object Managers that support video, audio, text, image, HTML, time-series and spatial data, officials said. The program's purpose is to offer users as many complex data extenders as possible, à la Informix Software Inc.'s DataBlades for Universal Server, rolled out this week. Depending on the vendor, the third-party Object Managers will be either resold by Object Design or sold directly by the partner company, officials said. "This would let Object Design create an ecosystem for its database, where by working with third-party vendors it creates a broader market than it could create alone," said Steve McClure, an analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. Copyright(c) 1996 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. PC Week and the PC Week logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. PC Week Online and the PC Week Online logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Send mail to PC Week