Collaboration Segment

The Push Technology

Ozgur Balsoy 
CPS 714 Fall 97
 
Introduction
 
     Academic community saw the power of simple HTTP communications, and proposed many extensions to either to the protocol, browsers, or users' computing environments to turn the one-way communication between servers and clients to a world of collaboration participating by millions as early as 1994. Some of these proposals are listed here: 
 
  Push Technology
 
    One of the outcomes of the above mentioned proposals and a solution to synchronous collaboration was the Push Technology. In this technology, clients initiates a connection to a push server, and starts to receive a stream of data. However, the difference is from the traditional search-oriented pull technology is that clients are not required to visit Web server sites later on, rather information is pushed to clients' computing environments, and displayed by push applications. This opened new markets for companies and the competition began. Microsoft proposed Channel Definition Format (CDF) in March 1997, and has signed contracts with more two hundred companies to support its technology. In the opposite side, a joint submission, the HTTP Distribution and Replication Protocol, to W3C was made by Marimba, Netscape, Sun, Novell, and @Home Corp. to set the standarts and take control of the technology in August 1997.

Nevertheless, not everybody is happy with the new technology, and a discussion has started:

It looks like the discussion will continue while the competition heats up. All we hope is that the winner at the end should the users of the Net. 

 
 
    References