WWW: Beyond the Basics

19. World Wide Web and Object Technology

19.4. Putting it all together

In this section we will try to condense the material covered in the previous sections into a comprehensive whole. We will see how various technologies can be integrated to complement each other in functionality and to provide a better environment for developing Web-based, distributed client-server applications. We will also look at the current developments taking place in this wide field and what their impact can be on the WWW. Finally, we will try to visualize what the Web might look like in the future and how it can change the desktop metaphor.

19.4.1. Integration of technologies

The best way to understand how the two technologies can be integrated is to look at some possible application scenarios.
  1. Database access and charting: You have an application that can access a remote database on the WWW and show you different views of the database. It also contains a component that can take the data obtained from the database and chart it for you in the format you want. All this is controlled by incorporating GUI elements like buttons and list in the application. E.g. the click of a button may activate the database viewer component to send a request to the remote database, get the most recent set of data, and simultaneously instruct the charting component to update the chart on screen.

  2. Real estate agent: You create a software agent and send it out on the network to query real estate information servers and find out the lowest price of a piece of real estate in a particular area. The agent moves from server to server and after collecting the information it wants, returns to the home server. It then passes the information it collected to a display component that summarizes the results and presents them to you in a comprehensible manner.

  3. Distributed spell checkers: Consider a word-processing plug-in in your browser that uses distributed spell checkers and thesauruses on the WWW. You don't have to store the huge dictionaries on your machine and you can also spell check multiple languages. All your spell checker need to know is the location of the desired language dictionary on the WWW.

19.4.2. Current implementations and developments

Let take a look at some of the existing products and major development taking place in the field of distributed objects for the Web. The links point to the Web sites for the respective products.

19.4.3. Future architectures

There is a lot more to the World Wide Web than just surfing through hypertext information. It has the capability to transform the way in which we carry out our computing tasks as well as our daily business. Let's look at some scenarios that can become possible in future if the WWW and Object technology successfully merge together.

All these might seem to be wishful thinking at present, but if Web technology moves at the same pace at it is now, creating the above scenarios will not take much time.

 
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Copyright © 1996 Ashish B. Shah, All Rights Reserved.

Ashish B. Shah <ashish@csgrad.cs.vt.edu>
Last modified: Tue Oct 29 11:59:59 1996