WEBGOP: collaborative web services based on graph-oriented programming

WEBGOP is a programming architecture for collaborative Web services using graph-oriented programming. The motivation for the project comes from the realization that the integration of collaborative Web services lacks support. The aim of WEBGOP is to extend the Web from a client-server system to a structured multipoint system. A graph abstraction of the network provides the structure for the integration of Web services and facilitates their configuration and programming. Using WEBGOP, a logical graph representing a virtual-overlay network over the Internet is created to link up collaborative Web services. Web services are individually or jointly invoked through either unicast or multicast messages within the overlay network. All messages are based on the simple-object access protocol (SOAP). This forms an extension of the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to support the distributed invocation of Web services. The Web services on different servers work collaboratively for a multipoint network application. This project provides a structured integration of Web services by extending the support of intermediary processing in a multipoint service. It also provides a rich network-programming interface for a new class of integrated Web applications while retaining the use of the Internet protocol and HTTP.