To: Douglas Wilson @ Lotus, Scott Kliger @ Lotus, Phil Stanhope @ Lotus,
Alex Morrow @ Lotus, Joe Gulhridge @ Lotus, Jack Ozzie @ IRIS, Barry
Brfggs @ Lotus, Aswan Dev, Ailen Olsen @ Lotus, Aswan Clients, Jeffrey R
Beir @ Lotus, Michael Welles @ Lotus, Steve Manousos @ Lotus, Mike
Vassilopoulos @ Lotus
cc: John Landrt @ Lotus, Ilene Lang @ Lotus
From: Noah Mendelsohn
Date: 02/03/95 03:54:31 PM
Subject: Meeting with Sara Williams Regarding OCX Status and Support
Sara Williams, an OLE/OCX/Cairo evangelist in Microsoft DRG visited with
a group of Lotus developers at Rogers Steel on Tuesday afternoon,
January 31. Here are minutes of our meeting. The purpose of the meeting
was to review Lotus’ concerns regarding Microsoft’s fairness in
supporting OCX development, and to answer other questions regarding OCX
and OLE.
Unless otherwise indicated, all questions are from Lotus personnel and
all answers are from Sara. Sara has promised to respond by email on all
the unresolved points listed below. I’ve rearranged the order of
discussion to put the most useful new information near the top.
Lotus Attendees: Noah Mendebohn, Scott Kliger, Phil Stanhope, Edward
Ogu~ofor, Jeff Buxton
Primary topic:
Lack of appropriate support and documentation for OCX. Microsoft
applications and tools seem to have an unfair advantage using OCX-how
did Microsoft release container apps when nobody is supposed to have
sample code yet?
The most important issue we discussed, and the one we spent the most
time on, is Lotus’ concern that OCX support for ISV’s is inadequate,
that sample code for containers is not available, that the only server
samples are part of MFC and carry restrictive licenses, and that
Microsoft has somehow managed to ship products using OCX in spite of
these limitations. Speaking only for herself, Sara indicated that she
shares many of these concerns. She also said that Microsoft as a whole
does recognize that there is a problem regarding support for ISV’s using
OCX.
We emphasized the degree to which we view this as a serious threat to
our ability to compete. While there were also problems when OLE 2.0
itself was released, the OCX situation is far worse. For OLE 2.0,
Microsoft provided comprehensive published documentation, an extensive
support infrastructure, and sample implementations which were of
moderately good quality and no more restrictively licensed than the
Windows operating system itself.
The current situation with OCX is inappropriate. Sara reiterated that
she understood our concerns, but said she had not realized the
seriousness with which we viewed these problem. She asked what could be
cone to resolve the problems. Among the possibilities that we suggested
were:
(1) provide freely licensed production quality sample implementations of
container and server immediately ... if other samples cannot be
provided, remove the licensing restrictions on the relevant parts of the
MFC controls implementation and the CDK.
(2) publicly acknowledge that OCX is an operating system API, to be
supported with at least the same degree of open process as is applied to
the windows API and OLE 2.0.
(3) Provide open support and immediately redress any advantages which
may currently be given to Microsoft applications or tools products in
using OCX
(4) Lotus believes that support could be improved and integration with
OLE technology streamlined if Microsoft were to transfer OCX development
responsibility to their systems organization, but that is ultimately an
internal concern of Microsoft.
Sara acknowledged that the problems we highlighted are real, and that
many of them do trace to the fact that OCX development is done in the
tools group. She promised to promptly review our concerns with Doug
Heinrich and other senior managers at Microsoft.
OTHER
Q. What OCX containers are available tor testing. For which ones is
source available?
A. CPatron (source available, but not a production quality sample),
Access (no source), VB.4.0 (Beta-no source), Visual FoxPro (no source).
Doesn’t know whether Eforms has OCX container. Cairo shell will.
Q. What about Mike Blaszczack’s sample container?
A. Right, that’s coming when the MSJ article is published, but it’s
based on MFC OLE support, so you probably have licensing problems with
it. Also Kraig Brockschmidt is writing some new white papers on creating
an OLE controls container.
Q. We’ve heard that Microsoft is contemplating support for 32 bit VBX’s
after all.
A. I’ve heard nothing about it and I can't imagine why we would do that.
Lotus: Because VBX vendors are telling you that OCXs are too hard to
build and that they have too
much overhead.
A. I haven’t heard that and I think I would know about any change in
strategy. It’s still: VBX is 16 bit only, OCX is preferred, and on 32
bit, it’s the only option.
Q. Is OCX on the Mac? Will it be? What about other Wise platforms?
A. Don’t know...will check. At best, Wise platforms would lag significantly.
Q. Will the OLE documents extensions previewed last week apply to OLE
Controls.
A. I would think so. (BTW, I’m not sure she’s right about that. Some of
the OLE documents extensions are implemented in the OLE default handler,
which is not normally used by OLE controls.)
Q. Tell us about OCX futures.
A. There is an improved CDK in the new Visual C-+, just out. Beyond
that, can’t say much. A strange situation has arisen within Microsoft
according to Sara. Although the Developer Relations Group (DRG) of which
she is a part is organizationally affiliated with the Tools Group (i.e.
languages, data bases, etc.), DRG actually has a much closer working
relationship with the sysems organization See discussion above.
Q. Can we get the VB 4.0 beta? It’s the only useful example of a
production quality OCX
container wilh scripling.
A. Will check.
The lack of clear OCX documentation is aggravating a problem we’ve had
with OLE 2.0 since the beginning: everybody’s doing it differently.
A. Microsoft is working on a validation suite for OLE 2.0 to test
interoperability. First wave may see this in the next couple of months.
Not clear whether this applies to OCX - I suspect not (NRM).
Lotus: Great, something like this is needed, but please make sure thal
ISV’s get to comment before the validation suite is frozen.
Compatibility checking is important, but let’s make sure you’re not
preventing our apps from doing what they need to do.
Q. Do you have more information on apartment model threading in OLE?
A. Apartment model threading will be supported in Win95 and NT 3.5.1.
Should be in current win95 builds on ISDN. Fundamentally, each COM
object does its work on a single thread. Sara is currently writing a
white paper, with sample code. It will (probably) be available within
the next 2 weeks or so on the ISDN server.
Q. When will a common .EXE be usable with the OLE .DLLs on NT and Win95
A. Don’t know. Will check.
What are the details of OLE support in the Chicago shell? Why was Lotus
told that the shell would not be OLE enabled when In fact it is? Why was
Lotus not given earlier warning if there was a change of plan? We’re
still lacking useful documentation on OLE in the shell-is there any?
A. Sara didn’t seem to be familiar with the history of this problem, or
with any of the details of OLE
enabling in the shell.
Q. .DLLs have advantages over .EXE’s in terms of performance and
flexibility, but doesn’t the OCX architecture take us back to where we
were with Win16 in terms of programs (in this case components) impacting
each others’ integrity? Also: isn’t this an incredibly powerful
opportunity for those writing Trojan horses, viruses, etc?
All: This question generated quite a length discussion, but Sara didn’t
seem to know whether anyone at Microsoft had given this serious
consideration, whether there is an official corporate position on the
problem, or whether there are any specific efforts planned to minimize
the impact. The Lotus attendees expressed a strong concern that these
were serious problems. It’s ironic that we’ve waited for robust, secure,
32 bit operating systems as the appropriate environment for OLE, and now
we’re tooking at running multiple components within the same process
space. (Noah’s observation, not expressed at the meeting: this is why
the research community is looking at special purpose operating systems
and special purpose hardware to support component based architectures,
it’s difficult to get good pertormance with good isolation using
convention processors and OS’s.) Noah
http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX02235.pdf
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