An architecture for unified dialogue in distributed object systems

In traditional information systems, the user interface is controlled by one single application. In distributed systems, several distributed components may want to influence the appearance and logic of the user interface. This paper describes a unified dialogue architecture which enables several distributed components to control the logic and contents of the user dialogue while keeping the dialogue consistent. This architecture is a practical example of using dialogue agents, CORBA and Java. Details are described in connection with a large domain-specific distributed system. Discussion is also provided as to other manners in which this architecture may be implemented, followed by a discussion concerning other problem areas in which the unified dialogue architecture can be effectively applied.