Assembling Business-Critical Applications from Components

INTEROPERABLE OBJECTS ELEMENT (IOE) forms an integral portion of Neuron Data's object-oriented open architecture, that enables the professional developer to build reactive, custom business applications by assembling software components either from the built-in Neuron Data libraries, or from in-house or third-parties components. IOE allows applications built within the ELEMENTS ENVIRONMENT version 2.0 to leverage and put to immediate use the strengths of the emerging object industry standards OLE (and soon, CORBA). It also is the basis for seamlessly integrating the vast resources offered by the Internet and the World Wide Web into corporate applications. This capability gives Elements-developed applications an added edge-true interoperability throughout and beyond the enterprise.

Heterogeneous Object Access

IOE provides access to objects that are both internal and external to the ELEMENTS ENVIRONMENT. External objects are accessed via drivers to a specific object model (such as OLE or CORBA). The IOE is accessed via the Elements Environment's OO4GL Script (OOScript) language. With IOE, external objects, such as EXCEL spreadsheet objects, PowerPoint objects or any other OLE-automation-enabled objects, can be accessed via the OOScript language through OLE.

IOE contains a set of libraries which allows ELEMENTS ENVIRONMENT clients such as the OOScript language and any Visual Basic or VBA apps to access services through objects defined in servers. These server objects can be of multiple types and be both internal ELEMENTS ENVIRONMENT objects as well as external OLE-registered objects.

IOE brings a seamless integration of the different objects, even if internally they have different optimized representations.

Modular Client/Server Architecture

IOE is architected as a client/server component. An IOE client (such as the OOScript) uses the IOE Client library to access any server. This layer talks to the IOE Transport to create/access objects or object properties, invoke object methods available in servers and browse meta-information available in the servers. The IOE Transport library provides the interface to the IOE servers.

The IOE servers provide objects and services. The usage of IOE is primarily be through the object notation in the scripting language or from any other OLE-Automation client on the PC platform (Win, Win95, Win NT). These services come in two flavors: in-process servers-servers that are available as dynamic libraries to be loaded in the same memory space as the client executable; and servers-servers that are available as separate executables. In most cases, the developer will use the servers when there is a need to share the same servers across multiple applications.

True Integration and Interoperability

Neuron Data's Elements Environment Architecture consists of two primary types of components: Elements, tool modules optimized for specific development needs; and integration and assembly tools, such as visual editors, script, C and C++ interfaces. Underlying all of these Elements and Assembly tools and serving as the central application integration component is the IOE. It is this powerful component that enables easier, faster development of interoperable, component-based applications. The IOE thus enables a robust object-oriented architecture and environment for building maximum flexibility and performance into demanding real-world applications.

Copyright 1996 Neuron Data, Inc. The ELEMENTS ENVIRONMENT, DATA ACCESS ELEMENT, DISTRIBUTED MESSAGING ELEMENT, INTELLIGENT RULES ELEMENT, INTEROPERABLE OBJECTS ELEMENT, OPEN INTERFACE ELEMENT, WEB ELEMENT, Open Editor and OOScript are trademarks of Neuron Data. Other product names are trademarks and/or trade names of their respective manufacturers.