Object Design, Incorporated (often called ODI) was a
software company founded by
Daniel Weinreb
Daniel L. Weinreb (January 6, 1959 – September 7, 2012) was an American computer scientist and programmer, with significant work in the environment of the programming language Lisp.
Early life
Weinreb was born on January 6, 1959, in Brookl ...
in 1988 which developed and commercialized an
object database called
ObjectStore.
Object Design was founded by several former
Symbolics
Symbolics was a computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system. employees, including Daniel Weinreb, and was based in
Burlington, Massachusetts
Burlington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 26,377 at the 2020 census.
History
It is believed that Burlington takes its name from the English town of Bridlington, Yorkshire, but this has never b ...
.
Its
ObjectStore object-oriented database
An object database or object-oriented database is a database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. Object databases are different from relational databases which are ...
shipped in 1990.
In 1994, ODI was listed as No. 1 on ''
Inc.'' magazine's list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. A major early customer was
Telstra
Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...
, which used it to map
toll-free telephone number
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefi ...
s to an end point close to the caller, for example a local taxi company or chain restaurant.
ODI's
went public in 1996, and was listed on
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
as ODIS.
[Find The Company, "Object Design Inc. (ODIS) Initial Public Offering" http://ipo.findthecompany.com/l/444/Object-Design-Inc]
In 1999, ODI shipped its eXcelon
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
application development environment
A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific to ...
, which it marketed as an "integration server".
In January 2000, ODI was renamed eXcelon and focused its marketing on XML integration software.
[Eugene Grygo, "Object Design reinvents itself as eXcelon", ''InfoWorld'' 31 January 2000, p. 16]
In 2002, ODI was acquired by
Progress Software, which continued to develop it. In 2013, Progress Software sold the ObjectStore product line (among others) to Aurea Software, Inc., a newly formed operating subsidiary of ESW Capital, which in turn is the investment arm of
Trilogy Enterprises. As part of the deal, ObjectStore moved to a separate operating subsidiary of ESW Capital.
References
{{Reflist
Software companies based in Massachusetts
Database companies
Software companies established in 1988
Software companies disestablished in 2002
1988 establishments in Massachusetts
2002 disestablishments in Massachusetts
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Defunct software companies of the United States
1996 initial public offerings