The report is a joint effort from all three members of the Interoperability Special Interest Group, which are, apart Malcolm WOODMAN, Michael HALLORAN and Michel PONS; both contractors working for CO-LaN.
The Charter of the Interoperability Special Interest Group remains the same with “To provide tools and advice to support the achievement of CAPE-OPEN interoperability and to carry out interoperability testing where appropriate” remaining the main task.
The work process of this Special Interest Group relies on monthly conference calls to survey progress and identify actions with Michael HALLORAN and Michel PONS implementing the actions, conducting tests and resolving defects as needed. The Interoperability Special Interest Group is also in charge of the repositories set up to support CO-LaN internal work and public distribution of software related products.
Code signing certificate: the Methods & Tools Special Interest Group had formalized the need for recognizing CO-LaN software as originating from CO-LaN. This is especially necessary for a piece of software like the CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and Primary Interop Assemblies installers: it is necessary to prove to their users that these installers and their contents have not been compromised by any 3rd party. A commercial solution has been tested by the Interoperability Special Interest Group and a certificate bought for 3 years. Both the CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and PIA installers and the CAPE-OPEN Logging and Testing Tool (COLTT) are now using this certificate. It is available for signing all CO-LaN software.
Regarding repositories it is worth noting that SourceForge is no longer in use for COLTT as a source versioning and distribution repository. It was found necessary to stick to a repositiory provider from which backups are readily available for the whole project.
About the CAPE-OPEN Logging and Testing Tool (COLTT), an intermediate release (2.3.1) with minor modifications was issued. Apart from minor corrections, it fixes an issue with Microsoft run-time library reported by an end-user outside CO-LaN membership. It also removes the dependency to Microsoft .NET Framework 2. The current roadmap for COLTT calls for the development of a 64 bit version, to be able to serve recent and coming releases of CAPE-OPEN applications with a 64-bit architecture.
Last but not least, the Interoperability Special Interest Group worked on delivering a new version of the CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and Primary Interop Assemblies installers. These installers deliver the files which are common to all CAPE-OPEN software. The Interoperability Special Interest Group emphasizes the need for all software developers to use these installers within their development process as well as within their product distribution process. Since the CAPE-OPEN Type Libraries and Primary Interop Installers are becoming part of commercial releases, it sets an higher requirement for quality. These installers are currently in use in the release package of DWSIM and PRO/II. Version 2.0 has been released and a version 2.1 is soon to be released that will correct deficiencies found in version 2.0 through the testing conducted by a number of parties.
Finally Malcolm addressed the tester suite as part of future plans, making the point that additional resources will be needed to re-develop such a testing tool.