View source for Side by Side Comparison - OpenDoc vs. OLE2

{|class="wikitable"
!OpenDoc||OLE2
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|Open System - Freely licensed to the industry through the Component Integration Laboratories.||Proprietary - Owned and controlled by Microsoft.
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|SOM - Based on industry standard for object-oriented programming (CORBA).||COM - NOT CORBA compliant; no inheritance; aggregation proposed as alternative.
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|Distributed - OpenDoc parts can be embedded from anywhere in the network.||Not Distributed - Can only embed objects from local OLE servers.
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|Cross-platform support - OpenDoc will be available on Apple, OS/2, UNIX, and Microsoft Windows.||Only available on Microsoft Windows.
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|Language Neutral - SOM bindings make OpenDoc readily available from any language.||Difficult to use with languages other than C++.
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|Source code available.||Source code NOT available.
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|Any part can be at the "root" of the document.||In OLE, only specialized containers can be at the "root".
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|Parts can be any shape.||OLE objects must be rectangular
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|OpenDoc maintains multiple draft versions of a document.||No support for multiple drafts on OLE.
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|OpenDoc parts can overlap.||OLE objects CANNOT overlap.
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|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.
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|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.
|}

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[[Category:Developer Connection News Volume 2]]