WWW5 Workshops Sessions

Programming the Web - a search for APIs

Chairman

Anton Eliëns, Vrije Universiteit, mailto:eliens@cs.vu.nl

Co-Chairs:
David De Roure, mailto:dder@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Simon Dobson, mailto:S.Dobson@rl.ac.uk

List of Participants

  1. Seshu Adunuthula, Oracle Coorporation,  [Broker],
  2. Mala Anand, Oracle Coorporation,  [Broker], mailto:manand@us.oracle.com
  3. Anselm Baird-Smith, W3C,  [Jigsaw], mailto:abaird@w3.org
  4. Henri Brouchoud, FRANCE TELECOM, mailto:Henri.Brouchoud@lannion.cnet.fr
  5. Mark Brown, Open Market,  [FastCGI], mailto:mbrown@OpenMarket.com
  6. Luca Cardelli, DEC SRC,  [Model], mailto:luca@pa.dec.com
  7. N. Chilton, Univ. of Bradford,  [VAPIS], mailto:N.Chilton@bradford.ac.uk
  8. Richard Connor, UK,  [HIPPO], mailto:richard@dcs.st-and.ac.uk
  9. Leslie L. Daigle, Bunyip Information Systems,  [URA], mailto:pedro@bunyip.com
  10. R.A. Earnshaw, Univ. of Bradford,  [VAPIS], mailto:R.A.Earnshaw@bradford.ac.uk
  11. Joakim Eriksson, Telia Research,  [UOD], mailto:joakime@Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE
  12. Niclas Finne, Telia Research,  [UOD], mailto: nfi@sics.se
  13. Sverker Janson, SICS,  [UOD], mailto:sverker@sics.se
  14. Bill Janssen, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,  [DOOWWW], mailto:janssen@parc.xerox.com
  15. Kanchana Kanchanasut, mailto:Kanchana.Kanchanasut@ait.ac.th
  16. Thomas Koch, GMD,  [Meta], mailto:thomas.koch@gmd.de
  17. Bernard Lang,INRIA,  [V6], mailto:Bernard.Lang@inria.fr
  18. Daniel Mavrakis, MC-TEL,  [VEMMI], mailto:mavrakis@mctel.fr
  19. Sandro Mazzucato, Bunyip Information Systems,  [URA]
  20. Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, W3C,  [W3Reference], mailto:frystyk@w3.org
  21. Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Vrije Universiteit A'dam,  [DejaVu], mailto:jrvosse@cs.vu.nl
  22. I.J. Palmer, Univ. of Bradford,  [VAPIS], mailto:I.J.Palmer@comp.brad.ac.uk
  23. Nicolas Romanetti, BT Labs (Ipswich, uk), mailto:nromanet@jungle.bt.co.uk
  24. Francois Rouaix, INRIA,  [V6], mailto:Francois.Rouaix@inria.fr
  25. Bastiaan Schönhage, Vrije Universiteit A'dam,  [DejaVu], mailto:bastiaan@cs.vu.nl
  26. Mike Spreitzer, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,  [DOOWWW], mailto:spreitze@parc.xerox.com
  27. Robert Thau, MIT,  [Configure], mailto:rst@ai.mit.edu
  28. Pierre Welner, AT&T,  [Tele], mailto:pierre@big.att.com
  29. Andy Wood, Univ. of Birmingham,  [CAMEO], mailto:amw@cs.bham.ac.uk

Position papers

  1. Seshu Adunuthula & Mala Anand,  [Broker], Web Request Broker API, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/Broker.html The Web Request Broker (WRB) API provides a programmatic interface to the Oracle Web Request Broker and enables applications developers to develop their applications (called cartridges in this document) for the WRB.
  2. Anselm Baird-Smith,  [Jigsaw], Jigsaw, An Object-Oriented Web server, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/Jigsaw.html In designing Jigsaw, the new experimental server from the World-Wide-Web consortium (written in Java), we took the opportunity of starting from scratch to test a new approach: each exported resource is a full object. This paper will briefly explain the Resource concept of Jigsaw and its configuration process.
  3. Mark Brown,  [FastCGI], FastCGI: A High-Performance Gateway Interface http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/Open.html FastCGI is a fast, open, and secure Web server interface that solves the performance problems inherent in CGI without introducing any of the new problems associated with writing applications to lower-level Web server APIs. Modules to support FastCGI can be plugged into Web server APIs such as Apache API, NSAPI, and ISAPI.
  4. Luca Cardelli,  [Model], What is the Web's Model of Computation? http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/Model.html The communication protocols that bind the Internet together synthesize a global computer out of a large collection of processors and networks. A natural question is: how do we program this global computer and, in particular, how do we program the World-Wide Web? If we could integrate the Web with a proper distributed object system like CORBA, all our programming problems would be solved. Or would they?
  5. Richard Connor,  [HIPPO], High-level Internet Programming with Persistent Objects, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/HIPPO.html The HIPPO high-level paradigm may be considered at two levels. Firstly, HIPPO provides a programming system which has the embedded semantics of URLs and associated models. ... Secondly, HIPPO provides a mechanism for creating new files which may be interpreted, by other HIPPO systems, as collections of high-level typed objects.
  6. Leslie L. Daigle & Sandro Mazzucato,  [URA], Building Specialized Web Services -- Where to Put the API http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/URA.html Before considering how to design an API to facilitate the construction of finely-tuned Web applications, we must first analyze the nature of the level of interaction that is to be supported by these applications.
  7. Anton Eliëns, Jacco van Ossenbruggen & Bastiaan Schönhage,  [DejaVu], The DejaVu framework -- a software architecture for Web components, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/DejaVu/index.html The DejaVu framework offers access to the Web as one of the facilities in a collection of software components for developing multimedia user interfaces and hypermedia applications.
  8. Joakim Eriksson, Niclas Finne & Sverker Janson,  [UOD], Interfacing the web to an open agent-based market infrastructure, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/UOD.html At a first glance, the web may seem like a good infrastructure for electronic commerce, but with a closer look, and with a view to future open agent-based market infrastructures, the insufficiencies become apparent. ... We are currently exploring what types of formats and protocols are needed for these marketplace interactions.
  9. Bill Janssen & Mike Spreitzer,  [DOOWWW], A Distributed-Object-Oriented World Wide Web, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/DOOWWW.html The WWW can and should be analyzed to reveal its fundamental abstractions. These abstractions can be cast as programming interfaces. For maximum payoff, all these interfaces should be set in a distributed object system, such as CORBA (in general) or ILU (in particular).
  10. Thomas Koch,  [Meta], MetaWeb -- a general purpose interface to shared interactive applications in the World-Wide Web, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/Meta.html This paper summarizes the evolution in use of the web during the last years and sketches the current limitations as well as already proposed solutions. Finally it presents an architecture that can be used to build web-based applications without the current restrictions and sketches how an existing web-based application can be extended by using this architecture.
  11. Bernard Lang and Francois Rouaix,  [V6], The V6 Engine, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/V6/index.html WWW browsers may be seen as the composition of a multimedia interface, and a set of internet communications facilities. We propose (like some other authors) to extend the communications/processing functionalities by means of filters placed on the communication lines.
  12. Daniel Mavrakis,  [VEMMI], VEMMI: a new On-line Client/Server Multimedia, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/VEMMI.html This paper will introduce this new European (ETSI 300 382 and ETS 300 709) and international (ITU-T/CCITT T.107) VEMMI standard: "Enhanced Man-Machine Interface for Videotex and Multimedia/Hypermedia Information Retrieval Services" , and how it could be used right now to create on-line advanced multimedia services on the Internet, interworking with Web services.
  13. Henrik Frystyk Nielsen,  [W3CReference], Libwww API, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/W3C.html This position paper discusses the API of the W3C Reference Library, a.k.a. "libwww". It introduces some of the basic concepts like streams, call-out functions, and plug-in modules.
  14. I.J.Palmer, N.Chilton & R.A.Earnshaw,  [VAPIS], Web Programming Environments: Towards a Virtual API, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/VAPIS/index.html In this document, we perform a comparison of some Web programming environments ... for our domain of interest, computer graphics (more specifically animation, visualization and virtual reality). ... We propose a `virtual' API that can be used to exploit specific features of lower-level APIs and bring together support for various specific features.
  15. Robert Thau,  [Configure], API support for Delegating Control over Server Configuration, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/Configure.html The position advocated here is that if a server extension is implemented through a server API, it should be possible for that server extension to be configured in a flexible way, and that provisions for doing so ought to be part of any proposed API standard.
  16. Pierre Wellner, [Tele], Web-based API for Teleconferencing, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/Tele.html Teleconferencing with ordinary telephones is a common way for people to meet without needing to travel, especially in the USA ...
  17. Andy Wood,  [CAMEO], CAMEO: Supporting Observable APIs, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/WWW5/papers/CAMEO.html We will refer to APIs that support these forms of monitoring, notification and triggering as 'observable'. cameo is a C++ toolkit and associated model that allows programmers to easily build observable APIs.