Firms to Agree on Software Specs

Netscape Communications Corp. said it and Sun Microsystems Inc., Oracle Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. will announce today that they’re backing a computer-networking software standard. By agreeing on set specifications for CORBA (for common object request broker architecture), the companies are trying to make it easier for software developers to write software that can be used with different hardware and software systems. The standard involves software objects, or building blocks, that can be interchanged and used with other software objects within a computer system. By agreeing on the CORBA specifications, developers will be able to write objects for Oracle, Netscape, IBM or Sun systems that work together. The specifications will be applied to transactions, security, monitoring and filing software in computer networks, Netscape said.