Side by Side Comparison - OpenDoc vs. OLE2

by IBM

OpenDoc	OLE2
Open System - Freely licensed to the industry through the Component Integration Laboratories.	Proprietary - Owned and controlled by Microsoft.
SOM - Based on industry standard for object-oriented programming (CORBA).	COM - NOT CORBA compliant; no inheritance; aggregation proposed as alternative.
Distributed - OpenDoc parts can be embedded from anywhere in the network.	Not Distributed - Can only embed objects from local OLE servers.
Cross-platform support - OpenDoc will be available on Apple, OS/2, UNIX, and Microsoft Windows.	Only available on Microsoft Windows.
Language Neutral - SOM bindings make OpenDoc readily available from any language.	Difficult to use with languages other than C++.
Source code available.	Source code NOT available.
Any part can be at the "root" of the document.	In OLE, only specialized containers can be at the "root".
Parts can be any shape.	OLE objects must be rectangular
OpenDoc maintains multiple draft versions of a document.	No support for multiple drafts on OLE.
OpenDoc parts can overlap.	OLE objects CANNOT overlap.
OpenDoc parts can be edited by clicking on them directly.	OLE objects must be activated and the content selected in order to edit it; when nested, multiple levels have to be activated.
Development effort: 50 mandatory functions for a basic part.	Development effort: 14 different interfaces must be different interfaces must be provided with a total of 136 functions mandatory.

Reprint Courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation, © International Business Machines Corporation