The Platform is the Web

The Platform is the Web

INTRODUCTION

VISION
STATEMENT

THE PLATFORM
IS THE WEB

LOCATION
INDEPENDENCE

BANDWIDTH
TOLERANCE

EASY DATA
RETRIEVAL

YOU CAN TRUST
IT

IT JUST WORKS

Increasingly, the web is becoming the medium in which all network services reside. For example, today I read my email over the web, administer email accounts over the web, and administer the router at my local elementary school over the web. I buy books over the web, and I manage my investments over the web at my stockbroker.

If you ask me what platform my software is running on, my answer is that the platform is the web. If you ask me to explain the web, I'll tell you that the web is the world's largest and most powerful computing platform.

To put this more concretely, we're advocating that each software service accessed by an end user should be accessed with web protocols (HTTP) from a web browser.

From the point of view of the user, this makes his world much simpler. To access any service, he follows a link or bookmark in a web browser. Provided he can find a computer with a functioning browser, he can do his work. The user is no longer restricted in his choice of Digital Unix, Windows, NC, or Macintosh; or of Intel or Alpha. The user also has no software to install, and nothing to configure. It just works, anywhere.

From the point of view of the system manager, this also makes his world much simpler. There are no per-user packages to install, much less worries about heterogeneous user environments (either by platform, or by OS, or even by OS version), and much less worries about upgrading users as new versions arrive (since the UI programs all download on demand when the user follows the link or bookmark).

From the point of view of system design, this means that the front-end to all the services is some form of web server (undoubtedly augmented by CGI programs). The back-end implements the actual service, and the web server and CGI program communicate with it through on-machine API's, or through application specific network protocols. The user-interface to all of these services is imbedded in the web browser, using whatever tools are appropriate to achieve the desired effect there: HTML, forms, JavaScript, Java applets, browser plug-ins, or even ActiveX.

Note that this also means the services should be available even if the user is on the wrong side of an awkward barrier such as a corporate firewall.