Deploying distributed objects on the Internet

Internet applications are becoming truly distributed as intelligence moves to the browser and services are being decentralised in order to improve their performance and availability. As a consequence distributed, object-oriented technology in the form of language-level support, e.g., Sava, or middleware platforms, e.g., CORBA, is being increasingly deployed. Underpinning this technology are many years of research, such as that undertaken by the members of the Broadcast Working Group, into the problems of distribution in large-scale systems. In this chapter we outline some of the constraints of large scale systems in general and the Internet in particular. We then present two case studies that illustrate the application of distributed, object-oriented technology developed within the project. The first of these is the W3Objects project in which the technology is applied to the Web, and the second in which it is applied to Computer Supported Collaborative Work Internet applications.