This paper presents intermediate results we obtained in an on-going project dedicated to enhance a software engineering environment. TRDP (Technical Research and Development Project) on software tools is a 3 steps international project shared between France and United States. The project is aimed at assembling and intergrating tools and framework services to support distributed software development. The project is funded by both the US and the French MOD. We try in this paper to describe how a type management service and a trader service will bring benefits to users of a software engineering environment. Problems tackled are well-known and we are trying to achieve a solution toward a better distributed interoperability between the tools within the environment. This interoperability will be not only driven by code but also data. This paper tries to give a rapid overview of what is type management. It describes what are the mechanisms that could help in order achieve a fully transparent interworking of heterogeneous systems. It also describes how a trader service is an interesting proposition in order to achieve the goals of distributed interoperability and tool and data support. It then shows the prototype that is currently developped by the authors.