The Object-powered Web Evolution of the Web Oo Comes of Age Objects Arrive on the Web State of the Union Object Power on the Web

M a y / J u n e 1 9 9 8 I E E E S o f t w a r e 5 7 he World Wide Web has become a key element of post-industrial society. In its various incarnations—Internet, intranet, extranet—its tentacles have spread to influence many facets of corporate and individual life. It follows that each extension of its capabilities has significant commercial and personal ramifications. The Web began as a medium for delivering content to essentially passive clients. It next extended its capabilities to support the deployment of applications involving lightweight, client-driven functionality. Now, however, it is poised for a dramatic transition: to serve as a medium for truly large-scale, trans-enterprise, distributed computing. This transformation will have profound implications for how corporations transact business and for how individuals live, work, and play. For developers, this will mean the ability to use new or legacy code—possibly running on transcontinentally located machines—to build distributed, three-tier client-server applications. For end users, this will mean the ability to integrate information needs across and beyond the enterprise. For the computing world, this will mean applications that transcend conventional boundaries of platform, organizational function, enterprise, industry, and geography, leveraging the true power of distributed computing. Vivekanand P. Kochikar, Infosys Technologies The Object-Powered Web The convergence o f Web and objec t-or iented technolog ies wi l l a l low appl i cat ions to t ranscend convent iona l boundar ies o f p lat form, organizat iona l func t ion , enterpr i se, indust r y, and geography to leverage the p ower o f d i s t r ibuted comput ing.