A Framework for Collaborative Applications using Web Services

Abstract — Many large distributed applications require data processing of massive amounts of raw information. Most organizations do not have the computing power or the necessary funds to undertake this kind of projects. Collaborative program designs can make these applications viable through the participation of many users that voluntarily support the project with human and computing resources. These highly distributed and heterogeneous resources must be harnessed and controlled into a useful application through a collaborative server. This paper describes a framework for these kind of applications using web services. It identifies the primary actors that are involved and server. BPEL4WS, a business workflow language is used to describe the collaborative server and to specify the server side behavior of the application. I