Microsoft Joins Rational to Submit Proposal to Object Management Group for Industry Standard Modeling Language

SANTA CLARA, Calif. —
, July 22, 1996 — Rational Software Corp. today announced that Microsoft Corp. is cooperating with and supporting Rational to define the Unified Modeling Language, a graphical object-modeling language developed at Rational. The companies plan to submit the Unified Modeling Language as a joint proposal on standard object models and notation to the Object Management Group (OMG) in response to the OMG’s recently issued Object Analysis and Design Request for Proposal. If accepted as a standard, the proposal is expected to remedy the current fragmentation of object modeling techniques in the marketplace.

The Unified Modeling Language represents an expansion of the earlier Unified Method developed by Rational. Rational has worked with Microsoft to take advantage of COM and Microsoft®
ActiveX
™
technologies. Rational has been actively soliciting customer feedback and industry involvement to refine the proposal and earlier this month published an addendum to its original draft.

“Customers developing intranet and Internet applications, enterprise systems, technical applications, and embedded systems are adopting object technology and component-based development,”
said Mike Devlin, chairman at Rational.
“With contributions from Microsoft, we have developed a single modeling language that supports business engineering, system engineering and software engineering for all of these applications.”

“The Unified Modeling Language is an essential part of helping developers visualize and graphically represent application structure as they move to component-based development,”
said Bob Muglia, vice president of development tools at Microsoft.

The UML unites the leading object-oriented analysis and design practices with COM and ActiveX Technologies, which have already been adopted by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide.”

The joint proposal will be presented to the OMG at the end of this year for consideration as a standard. The OMG is accepting proposals through January 1997 and is expected to make a decision next spring. The OMG of Framingham, Mass., is a consortium of vendors that are jointly developing a set of standards for distributed object technologies.

Rational Software Corp. develops, markets and supports a comprehensive solution for developing complex software applications. The company provides a solution that can be tailored to support a customer’s specific software-development needs. This solution is supported by an integrated family of tools that provide support for the critical phases of the software-development process, from business engineering and systems engineering, through initial analysis and design, to implementation, delivery and maintenance. In addition, Rational provides a full range of technical consulting, training and support services as an integral component of its solution.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.

Microsoft and ActiveX are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

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