The Open Works Development Kit (OWDK) is aimed at in-house software developers and commercial vendors. Hitherto the OWDK has had a $5,000 price tag plus maintenance but is now available at no charge. Users of the OWDK can extend Landmark applications, write links to existing data stores, and develop new applications that exchange data among proprietary and commercial packages.
Cottage industry?
The OWDK takes advantage of the underlying technologies of the OpenWorks framework and exposes the underlying components through application programming interface (API) libraries. While the OWDK is now freeware, it is unlikely to spark off a significant cottage industry in Landmark add-ons. While the OWDK may be free, the environment necessary to use the libraries is fairly heavy-duty; external requirements include:
Motif development libraries
An Oracle license
C, C++, and FORTRAN compilers
A runtime OpenWorks license
Objects Now!
The data access libraries includes the Geoscience Database Interface (GDI) which provides high-level data access based on standard geoscience objects such as wells and tops. The GDI includes high-level communication routines that enable programs to send and receive geoscience objects without writing low-level code. The Seismic Data Access Library provides API access to 2D/ 3D trace, horizon, and fault data used by SeisWorks. Also in the kit are a User Interface Library - GUI widgets providing OpenWorks look and feel for developed applications, the Session Management Library, Help System and Systems Library for debugging. The full version of the OWDK is still available for $5,000 and includes the source code for 15 sample programs and also full printed documentation. The OpenWorks Development Kit is offered on the following platforms: SunOS, Solaris, IBM RS/6000 AIX and SGI IRIX.
Happy users
PDM asked Mark Chidwick from Panther Software how useful the OWDK had been to their software development effort. Chidwick stated that Panther were very happy with the development kit and had been using it since 1994 to develop their data management software which integrates both OpenWorks and other industry standard environments. In particular, Panther were pleased and impressed by the fact that despite several version changes in OpenWorks over that period, they have never had to make significant changes to software developed using the kit.
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