Data-intensive intra- and Internet applications-experiences using Java and CORBA in the World Wide Web

Abstract

Intra/Internet technology has become a key issue in the development of modern systems. Nowadays, it is no longer sufficient to present static information sheets through the World Wide Web (WWW). Instead, we need interactive applications that may even compute complex results or process large data sets. In this paper, we describe a prototype based on Java and CORBA. Both represent modern concepts that have been developed to fulfill these requirements. Their combination results into the kind of data processing we want to apply to the WWW: (1) portable, powerful, structured and even reusable client programs instead of cryptic HTML scripts; (2) well-defined interfaces, and (3) efficient server processes separated from the WWW server and its CGI extensions. Communication is controlled by a fault-tolerant CORBA layer, which also enables server development using a different language than Java. Besides a discussion of CORBA and its data shipping capabilities, we take a closer look at Java and its runtime behavior, and we report on the experiences gathered with our prototype system and its testbed application. This system has also been used to gather experiences with and to influence the new language binding of the Standard Data Access Interface (SDAI) of the Standard for the Exchange of Product Data (STEP, ISO 10303) to Java.