Wabi is a discontinued commercial software application from Sun Microsystems that implements the

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

Win16 The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

specification on Solaris and

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belgi ...

; a version for Linux was also released by

Caldera Systems Caldera International, Inc., earlier Caldera Systems, was an American software company that existed from 1998 to 2002 and developed and sold Linux- and Unix-based operating system products. Caldera Systems was created in August 1998 as a spinoff ...

. Wabi runs applications developed for

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

, Windows 3.11, and Windows for Workgroups.

History

The technology was originally developed by Praxsys Technologies as the result of discussions in 1990 with

Interactive Systems Corporation Interactive Systems Corporation (styled INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation, abbreviated ISC) was a US-based software company and the first vendor of the Unix operating system outside AT&T, operating from Santa Monica, California. It was founded in 19 ...

. The assets of Praxsys were acquired by Sun in the fall of 1992. The name "Wabi" was chosen for two reasons: its meaning in Japanese of balance or harmony, which conjured the notion of a more peaceful coexistence between Windows and

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

software; and, the more obvious implication of it standing for Windows Application Binary Interface, although before its release Sun declared that the name was not an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

. Wabi 2.2B was licensed by

Caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcano eruption. When large volumes of magma are erupted over a short time, structural support for the rock above the magma chamber is ...

to allow its users to run Windows applications under

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, together with the also licensed

Merge Merge, merging, or merger may refer to: Concepts * Merge (traffic), the reduction of the number of lanes on a road * Merge (linguistics), a basic syntactic operation in generative syntax in the Minimalist Program * Merger (politics), the comb ...

. Wabi development was discontinued in December 1997.

Features

Wabi requires a Windows 3.x installation in order to work, meaning that it also requires a Windows license, unlike similar software that endeavors to implement the entire Windows API, such as

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

or select versions of

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...

. The basic premise of the product is to provide an emulation of the lowest layers of the Windows environment in the form of the user.dll, kernel.dll and gdi.dll libraries. As all other Windows dlls depend on these three modules, cloning this functionality allows Windows applications and their associated support dlls to execute correctly on a foreign host system. This approach, as opposed to a full replacement, was thought by the engineering team to be the only rational methodology for success given both the size of Microsoft's ever-expanding efforts and the difficulties of the emulation being precise enough to run commercial grades of software. Wabi was released for both

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...

and

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system develope ...

systems and also on PowerPC for AIX. In order to run an x86 Windows environment on SPARC systems, a code translation layer was also provided, which dynamically converts x86 instructions on first use into SPARC instructions.

Standardization attempt

In conjunction with its development of the Wabi software, Sun initiated an effort to create an

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

standard, non-proprietary definition of the Windows API. The

Public Windows Interface The Application Programming Interface for Windows (APIW) Standard is a specification of the Microsoft Windows 3.1 API drafted by Willows Software. It is the successor to previously proposed Public Windows Interface standard. It was created in an att ...

(PWI) was intended to define a publicly available standard that would help Sun and other companies that wished to clone the Microsoft Windows programming interface (such as Willows TWIN, another LGPL'd implementation of the API), but despite Sun's contention that there was no

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

breach, this effort was lobbied against at ISO by Microsoft, being rejected in 1996.Sun Uses ECMA as Path to ISO Java Standardization
(Computergram International)

References

External links

Wabi 2.2 User's Guide

Wabi Cpu Emulation

1998 comparison of Caldera's Wabi 2.2B, Wine and Willows Twin Libraries

"Wabi: Caldera's Solution for Windows Applications"
('' Linux Journal'', 1997)
Fun with Caldera WABI
{{Unix–Windows interoperability Compatibility layers Sun Microsystems software

History

Features

Standardization attempt

See also

References

External links