Distributed Objects Everywhere (DOE) was a long-running Sun Microsystems project to build a distributed computing environment based on the CORBA system in the 'back end' and OpenStep as the user interface. First started in 1990 and announced soon thereafter, it remained vaporware for many years before it was finally released as NEO in 1995. It was sold for only a short period before being dropped (along with OpenStep) in 1996. In its place is what is today known as Enterprise JavaBeans. Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... Distributed computing is decentralised and parallel computing, using two or more computers communicating over a network to accomplish a common objective or task. ... In computing, Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard for software componentry, created and controlled by the Object Management Group (OMG). ... OpenStep is an open object-oriented API specification for an object-oriented operating system that uses any modern operating system as its core, principally developed by NeXT. It is important to recognize that while OpenStep is an API specification, OPENSTEP (all capitalized) is a specific implementation of this OpenStep developed... Vaporware is software or hardware which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle. ... The Enterprise JavaBeans specification is one of the several Java APIs in the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition. ...

In the early 1990s the 'next big thing' in computing was to use desktop microcomputers to display and edit data being provided by mainframe and minicomputers. Although a number of methods for this sort of access already existed, the division of labor was not at all even. For instance, SQL required the workstation to download huge data sets and then process them locally, whereas terminal emulators did all of the work on the server and provided no GUI. The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular microcomputers of its era, and is the best selling home computer of all time. ... Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for legacy applications, typically bulk data processing (such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and bank transaction processing). ... Minicomputer (colloquially, mini) is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (traditionally, mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). ... SQL (commonly expanded to Structured Query Language — see History for the terms derivation) is the most popular computer language used to create, modify and retrieve and manipulate data from relational database management systems. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Gui is short for Guilherme or Guilhermo or an iteration of that, in English it translates to Will. ...

It seemed that the proper split of duties would be to have a cooperative set of objects, the workstation being responsible for display and user interaction, with processing on the server. Standing in the way of this sort of solution was the massive differences in operating systems and programming languages between platforms. While it might be possible to build such a system that would work on any one combination of workstation and server, the same solution would not work on any other system. An operating system (OS) is an essential software program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Computer code (HTML with JavaScript) in a tool that uses syntax highlighting (colors) to help the developer see the purpose of each piece of code. ...

Oddly, the differences between any two programming languages on a single platform was almost as great. Each language had its own format for passing parameters into procedure calls, the file formats that they generated were often quite different. In general terms, it was not always possible to write different portions of a program in different languages, although doing so often has real utility. The problem was not so acute on minicomputers and mainframes where the vendor often specified standards for their libraries, but on microcomputers the programming systems were generally delivered by a variety of 3rd party companies with no interest in standardization. Computer code (HTML with JavaScript) in a tool that uses syntax highlighting (colors) to help the developer see the purpose of each piece of code. ... In computer science, a subroutine (function, procedure, or subprogram) is a sequence of code which performs a specific task, as part of a larger program, and is grouped as one, or more, statement blocks; such code is sometimes collected into software libraries. ... Minicomputer (colloquially, mini) is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (traditionally, mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). ... Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for legacy applications, typically bulk data processing (such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and bank transaction processing). ...

Nevertheless this problem was being addressed in early 1990s through the introduction of various shared library systems. These were actually intended to ease resource use on smaller platforms, by allowing a number of programs using a common resource, like the GUI, to share a single copy of code instead of each loading a separate copy into memory. As a side effect of being able to be called from many programs, these systems also defined a standard way to call them, using an interface definition language, or IDL, to allow any language on the platform to understand the code inside the library. In computer science, a library is a collection of subprograms used to develop software. ... An interface description language, (alternatively interface definition language) (IDL), is a computer language or simple syntax for describing the interface of a software component. ...

Extending these systems to support remote procedure calls behind the scenes was seen as a natural upgrade, providing a solution to the client/server programming problem. At the time there were a number of major projects to delver such a system, including IBM's System Object Model (SOM/DSOM), NeXT's Portable Distributed Objects, Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM/DCOM) and many CORBA flavors. Sun, attempting to position itself as the future IBM in terms of backoffice support, felt they had to attack this market as well. Remote procedure call (RPC) is a protocol that allows a computer program running on one computer to cause a subroutine on another computer to be executed without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this interaction. ... For other uses, see IBM (disambiguation). ... The System Object Model is an object-oriented shared library system developed by IBM. A distributed version based on CORBA, DSOM allowed objects on different computers to communicate. ... The NeXT logo, designed by Paul Rand. ... Portable Distributed Objects, or PDO, is a programming API for creating object oriented code that runs anywhere on a network of computers. ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, SEHK: 4338) is an international computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of US$39. ... Component Object Model (COM) is a Microsoft platform for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. ... In computing, Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard for software componentry, created and controlled by the Object Management Group (OMG). ...

Sun's solution was based on work in their Spring operating system, which used intercommunicating objects for almost all programming tasks. Modifying this to work under a 'traditional' Unix like Solaris was not all that difficult, although Unix makes the assumption that all programs run locally, and an interface for remote access had to be added. For this, DOE added an object request broker (ORB) that ran on the backoffice servers, listening for DOE requests and handing them off to the proper program to be handled. During development, CORBA became a key buzzword in the industry. This prompted a delay while the ORB was re-engineered for CORBA support. Under the CORBA model, different objects, like those from DOE or SOM, would be able to interact by sharing a common interface. Spring was an experimental microkernel-based object oriented operating system developed at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... In distributed computing, an object request broker (ORB) is a piece of middleware software that allows programmers to make program calls from one computer to another, via a network. ... A buzzword (also known as a fashion word or vogue word) is an idiom, often a neologism, commonly used in managerial, technical, administrative, and sometimes political environments. ...

A bigger problem for Sun is that they had no integrated desktop object programming solution. Although C++ object libraries were becoming common on some platforms, their own SunView and Solaris operating systems were all 'plain C' based. In order to supply a comprehensive and flexible object programming solution, Sun had turned to NeXT and the two developed OpenStep. The idea was to have OpenStep programs calling DOE objects on Sun servers, providing a backoffice-to-frontoffice solution on Sun machines. OpenStep was only released in 1993, further delaying the project. For a WikiBook on programming with C++, see Wikibooks: C++ Programming. ... SunView (Sun Visual Integrated Environment for Workstations) was an early, non-networked windowing system from Sun Microsystems. ... This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ...

By the time DOE, now known as NEO, was released in 1995, Sun had already moved onto Java as their next big thing. Java was now the GUI of choice for client-side applications, and Sun's OpenStep plans were quietly dropped (see Lighthouse Design). NEO was re-positioned as a Java system with the introduction of Joe, but it saw little use. Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. ... Lighthouse Design Ltd. ...

Although distributed objects, and CORBA in particular, were the 'next big thing' in the early 90's, by the second half of the decade interest in them had essentially disappeared. Web-based applications running entirely on the server became the new 'next big thing', and the need for a powerful display system on the client-side was simply dropped and replaced by lightweight GUI's based on HTML. An excerpt of HTML code with syntax highlighting In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser. ...

References

• Distributed Object Computing with Joe and NEO