Exposing Application Components as Web Services

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for dynamically exposing arbitrary application components as Web Services, enabling remote access with flexible invocation semantics, which enhances distributed application development and debugging.

Contribution

It introduces a novel extension to traditional Web Services allowing dynamic exposure of any application component with pass-by-reference semantics.

Findings

Supports dynamic exposure of components

Enables pass-by-reference invocation semantics

Facilitates distributed application development

Abstract

This paper explores technology permitting arbitrary application components to be exposed for remote access from other software. Using this, the application and its constituent components can be written without concern for its distribution. Software running in different address spaces, on different machines, can perform operations on the remotely accessible components. This is of utility in the creation of distributed applications and in permitting tools such as debuggers, component browsers, observers or remote probes access to application components. Current middleware systems do not allow arbitrary exposure of application components: instead, the programmer is forced to decide statically which classes of component will support remote accessibility. In the work described here, arbitrary components of any class can be dynamically exposed via Web Services. Traditional Web Services are extended with a remote reference scheme. This extension permits application components to be invoked using either the traditional pass-by-value semantics supported by Web Services or pass-by-reference semantics. The latter permits the preservation of local call semantics across address space boundaries.