Talk:IBM System Object Model

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Confusion between IBM SOM and HP SOM

The existing article is solely about IBM's SOM. HP has a proprietary System Object Model - see HP-UX glossary. A brief excerpt:

System Object Model. A 32-bit HP-proprietary object file format for 10.x and 32-bit 11.0 releases of HP-UX.

I'm new to editing, and I'm hesitant to add this info since the entire layout currently is about IBM, and it has the [[Category:IBM software]] tag in it. --MeekMark 17:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A co-worker of mine located some technical specs for HP's SOM. There is a PDF file http://ftp.parisc-linux.org/docs/arch/pa-runtime-32-SOM.pdf listed at http://www.parisc-linux.org/documentation/index.html#pa11 that details the architecture, and there is a system header file /usr/include/a.out.h which includes other header files which define the layout. The a.out man page mentions that header file and has some additional information. MeekMark 16:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've created a separate article for the HP-UX SOM: System Object Model (file format). -- Dmeranda 05:14, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removed parts of paragraph

I have removed this unsourced fragment:

Many disparage this concept ^{[citation needed]} because the vast majority of programs are written in a single language, and the language neutrality always adds overhead — sometimes considerable.

Language neutrality does not always add overhead. Is a C library less efficient because it can also be called from a program written in Pascal? No, because language neutrality is achieved thanks to a standardized binary format (the procedural calling conventions). Similarly, a COM class is not necessarily less efficient than a C++ class (other than the fact that a COM object is always accessed using late binding). One of the main benefits of COM is that it adds a binary standard for objects. dpol (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Downloadables

I feel a complete emptyness when I can't see a "download" button. Is is told that there were versions for Windows. Was it SDK or is it only available as part of VisualAge IDE? In the latter case it's not surprising that it's fading away. I can see lots of talk on the net, but I can't touch anything real. Is it still available as part of VisualAge? Aekton (talk) 17:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IBM produced versions of SOM/DSOM for OS/2, Microsoft Windows and various Unix flavours (notably IBM's own AIX).

Where do one can find versions of SOM/DSOM for Microsoft Windows? The latest version of VisualAge C++ for Windows seems to be 4.03 (4.0 with fixpack 3). 4.0 can be found in DC++ p2p. Fixpack 3 is available on IBM's FTP. There are several files that contain SOMObj, but no samples and no documentation. VisualAge installs something called IBM runtime. There are lots of cpp-something-40.dll's and some of them contain SOMObj (they export deleteSOMObject for instance). However, none of them is pure. I mean, I'd expect a standalone dll with C naming convention only, but these ones contain constructors and destructors and so on. I can't say for sure whether it's crossplatform stubs (I mean, instead of #ifdef OS2 IBM used if (os == OS2)) or a working parts of code. It's strange that there is no samples and no documentation. It is said that SOM is used to integrate multiple languages (C++, BASIC, SmallTalk) in VisualAge so I'd expect to meet multilanguage samples. Maybe the only intended use of SOM for Windows was OpenDoc? Maybe I need to check out VisualAge SmallTalk? Aekton (talk) 03:04, 22 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]