The distribution is made of three elements:
- a zipped file that contains merge modules that are used in 3rd-party installation packages to install COBIA Runtime (also known as COBIA Core),
- an installation package of these merge modules for 64-bit machines (to be used to repair an installation of the merge modules made by other means),
- an installation package of COBIA Software Development Kit (SDK).
COBIA Runtime can be freely used and redistributed. COBIA Runtime consists of middleware components that will be installed on the end-user’s computer during installation of COBIA-based Process Modelling Environments (PMEs) and Process Modelling Components (PMCs) developed by a software provider. The COBIA Runtime is intended to be distributed with and utilized by third-party software.
The COBIA Software Development Kit (SDK) is provided for free as a stand-alone installation package which distributes a set of components and tools that are used by a software developer to create software that utilizes COBIA as the middleware for CAPE-OPEN interoperability. The SDK includes code generators to help create the source code of interfaces developed from the CAPE-OPEN Interface Definition Language (IDL) specifically adapted to COBIA. The SDK installer installs COBIA Runtime as well.
Development and maintenance of COBIA is conducted by AmsterCHEM for CO-LaN.
Version 1.2.0.9 resolves the following tickets:
- Ticket 109: small memory leaks in various places;
- Ticket 111: invalid template type in COMFlowsheetMonitoring::getUnitOperationCollection;
- Ticket 112: COBIA_createInstance returns a null pointer instead of an error if a PMC Class factory is not found;
- Ticket 113: DemoPPM does not hide its symbols to the dynamic linker leading to clashes with identical symbols of other COBIA applications
- Ticket 114: invalid IDispatch pointer returned by COMBIA COM objects;
- Ticket 115: cobiaRegister supports options /i [prog-id] and /r [prog-id];
- Ticket 116: invalid cast in DepersistFromTransitionFormat leads to crash when instantiating a COBIA PMC using saved info from a COM PMC;
- Ticket 117: adds a console-less version of cobiaRegister.exe.
Due especially to correction of Ticket 116, any application that calls DepersistFromTransitionFormat should update COBIA to 1.2.0.9 and recompile against the new COBIA.h header file. DepersistFromTransitionFormat is used when the persisted COM-version of a CAPE-OPEN PMC is recovered now that a COBIA-version of the same CAPE-OPEN PMC exists. This would happen with flowsheets making use of such a PMC and saved some time ago, with a version of the PMC using COM for CAPE-OPEN implementation. This is referred to as transitioning from COM to COBIA.
Attention should be pointed to issue raised in Ticket 124 (that CO-LaN does not intend to fix): COBIA stub code will refuse to load COBIA runtime installed by a current user from an elevated process. Some installers elevate in a mixed-mode scenario even when installing for the current user. Particularly the default multi-user scenario of NSIS is subject to this.
CO-LaN encourages all software developers to use version 1.2.0.9.
Previous release was version 1.2.0.8 released on October 22, 2021. Version 1.2.0.8 was downloaded 277 times for the SDK installer, 439 times for the archive of runtime merge modules, and 103 times for the runtime installer since it was made available.
Questions on COBIA 1.2 can be posted on the CAPE-OPEN forum dedicated to COBIA.