Migration from client/server architecture to internet computing architecture

The Internet Computing Architecture helps in providing a object-based infrastructure that can be used by the application developers to design, develop, and deploy the ntiered enterprise applications and services. For years of distributed application development, the Internet Computing Architecture has helped in providing various techniques and infrastructure software for the successful deployment of various systems, and established a foundation for the promotion of re-use and component oriented development. Object-oriented analysis is at the beginning of this architecture, which is carried through deploying and managing of finished systems. This architecture is multi-platform, multi-lingual, standards-based, and open that offers unparalleled integration capability. And for the development of mission critical systems in record time it has allowed for the reuse of the infrastructure components. This paper provides a detailed overview of the Internet Computing Architecture and the way it is applied to designing systems which can range from simple two-tier applications to n-tier Web/Object enterprise systems. Even for the best software developers and managers it is very hard to sort through alternative solutions in today\u27s business application development challenges. The problems with the potential solutions were not that complex now that the web has provided the medium for large-scale distributed computing. To implement an infrastructure for the support of applications architecture and to foster the component-oriented development and reuse is an extraordinary challenge. Further, to scale the needs of large enterprises and the Web/Internet the advancement in the multi-tiered middleware software have made the development of object-oriented systems more difficult. The Internet Computing Architecture defines a scaleable architecture, which can provide the necessary software components, which forms the basis of the solid middleware foundation and can address the different application types. For the software development process to be component-oriented the design and development methodologies are interwoven. The biggest advantage of the Internet Computing Architecture is that developers can design object application servers that can simultaneously support two- and three-tier Client/Server and Object/Web applications. This kind of flexibility allows different business objects to be reused by a large number of applications that not only supports a wide range of application architectures but also offers the flexibility in infrastructure for the integration of data sources. The server-based business objects are managed by runtime services with full support for application to be partitioned in a transactional-secure distributed environment. So for the environments that a supports high transaction volumes and a large number of users this offers a high scaleable solution. The integration of the distributed object technology with protocols of the World Wide Web is Internet Computing Architecture. Alternate means of communication between a browser on client machine and server machines are provided by various web protocols such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol and Internet Inter-ORB Protocol [NOP]. Protocols like TCP/IP also provides the addressing protocols and packetoriented transport for the Internet and Intranet communications. The recent advancements in the field of networking and worldwide web technology has promoted a new network-centric computing structure. World Wide Web evolves the global economy infrastructure both on the public and corporate Internet\u27s. The competition is growing between technologies to provide the infrastructure for distributed large-scale applications. These technologies emerge from academia, standard activities and individual vendors. Internet Computing Architecture is a comprehensive, open, Network-based architecture that provides extensibility for the design of distributed environments. Internet Computing Architecture also provides a clear understanding to integrate client/server computing with distributed object architectures and the Internet. This technology also creates the opportunity for a new emerging class of extremely powerful operational, collaboration, decision support, and e-commerce solutions which will catalyze the growth of a new networked economy based on intrabusiness, business -to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic transactions. These network solutions would be able to incorporate legacy mainframe systems, emerging applications as well as existing client/server environment, where still most of the world\u27s mission-critical applications run. Internet Computing Architecture is the industry\u27s only cross-platform infrastructure to develop and deploy network-centric, object-based, end-to-end applications across the network. Open and de facto standards are at the core of the Internet computing architecture such as: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)/ Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)/ Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). It has recognition, as the industry\u27s most advanced and practical technology solution for the implementation of a distributed object environment, including Interface Definition Language (IDL) for languageneutral interfaces and Internet Inter Operability (MOP) for object interoperability. Programming languages such as JAVA provides programmable, extensible and portable solutions throughout the Internet Computing Architecture. Internet Computing Architecture not only provides support, but also enhances ActiveX/Component Object Model (COM) clients through open COM/CORBA interoperability specifications. For distributed object-programming Java has also emerged as the de facto standard within the Internet/Intranet arena, making Java ideally suited to the distributed object nature of the Internet Computing Architecture. The portability that it offers across multi-tiers and platforms support open standards and makes it an excellent choice for cartridge development across all tiers

The annotation of continuous media

In principle, the presentation of continuous media is time-dependent. Examples of con­tinuous media are audio, video and graphics animation. This work is on the support for the annotation of continuous media, or the integration of voice comments with continuous- media documents like music and video clips. This application has strict synchronisation requirements, both with respect to the media involved and to user interaction. The applica­tion involves functions such as storage, management, control of GUIs, and of continuous- medium devices. These are realised by components which can be distributed across a network. New models and architectures have been defined to enable open distributed processing of applications, that is, distributed processing independent of operating systems. Abstractions are provided, which facilitate the development of applications, and these execute supported by platforms that implement such open architectures. These architectures have been based on an object-based client/server model. Our work aims at exploring object-orientation, open distributed processing and some characteristics of continuous media, through the development and use of the proposed application. The application is designed as a set of objects with well-defined functions and which interact between themselves. A distinguishing feature of the application is that it involves reusable components and mechanisms. For example, a mechanism, which enables components to control logical clocks and synchronise them, is incorporated in the application in response to its synchronisation requirements. The implementation is based on ANSAware, a platform that supports open distributed processing and allows distributed objects to bind to each other, to interact with one another, and to exhibit concurrent activities. The performance of the implementation is examined with respect to the application’s response to user requests. Response times of operations such as play, pause, etc., are measured, and the final results are better than a defined maximum tolerance. An analysis of the development approach is made with respect to support for real-time activities in the application, and to software reuse in the model proposed. This thesis concludes by reviewing the suitability of the object-oriented approach for the development of distributed continuous media applications

Strategic Directions in Object-Oriented Programming

This paper has provided an overview of the field of object-oriented programming. After presenting a historical perspective and some major achievements in the field, four research directions were introduced: technologies integration, software components, distributed programming, and new paradigms. In general there is a need to continue research in traditional areas:\ud (1) as computer systems become more and more complex, there is a need to further develop the work on architecture and design; \ud (2) to support the development of complex systems, there is a need for better languages, environments, and tools; \ud (3) foundations in the form of the conceptual framework and other theories must be extended to enhance the means for modeling and formal analysis, as well as for understanding future computer systems

Model Based Development of Quality-Aware Software Services

Modelling languages and development frameworks give support for functional and structural description of software architectures. But quality-aware applications require languages which allow expressing QoS as a first-class concept during architecture design and service composition, and to extend existing tools and infrastructures adding support for modelling, evaluating, managing and monitoring QoS aspects. In addition to its functional behaviour and internal structure, the developer of each service must consider the fulfilment of its quality requirements. If the service is flexible, the output quality depends both on input quality and available resources (e.g., amounts of CPU execution time and memory). From the software engineering point of view, modelling of quality-aware requirements and architectures require modelling support for the description of quality concepts, support for the analysis of quality properties (e.g. model checking and consistencies of quality constraints, assembly of quality), tool support for the transition from quality requirements to quality-aware architectures, and from quality-aware architecture to service run-time infrastructures. Quality management in run-time service infrastructures must give support for handling quality concepts dynamically. QoS-aware modeling frameworks and QoS-aware runtime management infrastructures require a common evolution to get their integration