A Standard for Eiffel

Santa Barbara, CA, July 14, 2005 -- Eiffel Software announced today that the Eiffel standard has been adopted by the General Assembly of Ecma International as ECMA - 367.

The Eiffel language, originally designed by Eiffel Software under the leadership of Object Technology pioneer Bertrand Meyer, and available today through implementations by Eiffel Software and several other providers, is used worldwide by major corporations in mission-critical applications in finance, defense, aerospace, health care and many other fields. Eiffel is the language of choice for companies who need the best in programmer productivity and reliability of the resulting software.

Eiffel standardization brings to the Eiffel community a guarantee of total, line-by-line compatibility between different implementations, and of long-term value of their investment. Through its award-winning EiffelStudio product, a complete development environment covering the entire software lifecycle and the leading Eiffel implementation, Eiffel Software is committed to full support of the Ecma Eiffel standard.

According to Larry Miller, business development manager at Eiffel Software, "Eiffel standardization is a major milestone for Eiffel users, corresponding to one of the most frequent requests from our customers. We are proud that Ecma International, the prestigious standard organization solely focused on computer technology, has approved the Eiffel standard, the culmination of three years of effort by the best minds from both the Eiffel user community and the Eiffel compiler industry."

"The Eiffel standard is an exciting example of successful harmonization," said Jan van den Beld, Secretary General of Ecma. "It is a large intellectual achievement to develop one international standard for a language like Eiffel which was conceived in 1985, and has ever further evolved since then. Congratulations!"

The Eiffel standard is available, free for copying and redistribution, from the Ecma site at http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/ECMA-367.htm. It is currently submitted for ISO (International Standards Organization) approval as part of Ecma's "fast-track" ISO status.

About Eiffel Software
Eiffel software was founded in 1985 with the mission of developing compilers and tools based on the power of pure object-oriented concepts to improve programmers productivity, lifecycle efficiency and quality of the resulting applications. For twenty years Eiffel Software has delivered to its customer's base the most cost-effective and advanced development tools on a large variety of platforms. Thanks to the power of the language and the tools of the environment, EiffelStudio and EiffelEnvision, Eiffel users continuously demonstrate that they can produce 2 to 10 times as much software in the same amount of time as can be achieved using other IDEs and toolsets. Eiffel has thus gained prominence in challenging enterprise environments in the financial, insurance, manufacturing, and government sectors as well as among independent development teams.

About Ecma International
Ecma was founded in 1961 by some of Europe's largest computer and technology companies with the goal of evaluating, developing, and ratifying telecommunications and computing standards. It was decided to headquarter Ecma in Geneva to be near other standards-making organizations with which Ecma coordinates activities, such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

Ecma's purpose and mission is to develop "standards and technical reports in order to facilitate and standardize the use of information processing and telecommunication systems."

To reflect the international activities of the Geneva-based Ecma organization the name was changed in 1994 to: Ecma International – An International Association for the standardization of information and communication systems.

Ecma's members are the world's leading technology companies such as Adobe/Macromedia, Apple, AxaRosenberg, Borland, Canon, EMC, Ericcson, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Philips, Siemens, Sony, Texas Instruments .... To be admitted as a new member, a two-thirds majority of current ordinary members is required. For more information, contact us or call (805) 685-1006.