March 1997, Volume 14, No. 3 Numetrix Unveils Next Generation Object Technology

DOMA directly addresses the limitations of traditional two- and three-tiered client-server architectures supporting dynamic planning environments. According to Edward Sitarski, vice president of R&D at Numetrix, "DOMA is a 'distributed architecture' -- the distribution of information is motivated by a need to share processing and communication bandwidth between clients and servers across an enterprise to achieve optimum scalability. Each tier in a distributed object architecture offers another way to distribute the processing of an application and increase user response."

DOMA is designed to prevent the bottlenecks created when multiple users request the same information and constantly poll the server for up-to-date information. It allows for the creation of multiple copies of relevant data subsets for review by various users, while ensuring all copies remain consistent and updated through an integrated synchronization mechanism.

"Due to the dynamic messaging inherent to DOMA, applications can be written to take automatic action when certain events or conditions occur," said Sitarski. "These intelligent agents automatically monitor the business process and take immediate action on routine information while flagging a user if and when a more complex issue or exception arises which requires attention and/or intervention. The planner does not have to find the problem -- the problem will find the planner."

Because DOMA is based on the Internet standard protocol, TCP/IP, DOMA objects can be connected over the Internet for truly global wide area network (WAN) connectivity. Web connectivity means a vast number of users as well as an enormous number of small messages can be responded to quickly and accurately. Since DOMA is distributed and always "up," it does not need to establish a slow connection to a database to respond to Web-based applications, facilitating multi-user, distributed collaborative planning. Also, DOMA supports network deployable application strategies such as Microsoft's Value Chain Initiative 'and AMR's Network Business Objects.