Information technology in the 21st century is about sharing
information - within the organization and across organizational
boundaries. Developing applications in this environment presents
challenges never before faced by IT departments. First, there
is the complexity resulting from the heterogeneous nature of
IT infrastructures. Then there is the inherent complexity of
the applications themselves. Internet applications are distributed
- they involve multiple computers, both client and server. They
are event-driven - some event occurs in one location which effects
what must be done in another location. They are asynchronous
- the reaction to the event may occur at a later time. To reduce
the complexity of building asynchronous, event-driven, applications
for a distributed network environment, what is needed is:
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A simple, efficient, yet powerful communication protocol
that supports asynchronous, two-way communication |
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Support for the multiple-protocol service standards that are currently
in use for inter-networking, both proprietary and open
standard |
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A multi-platform tool-set that will allow the application
to use whatever front-end is in fact appropriate, and
multiple front-ends if need be |
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Practical
tools for the implementation of business process and workflow
models
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The ZBE/Twisted
framework provides these three fundamental requirements and more. The ZBE is a
sophisticated, event-driven network framework that provides
extremely powerful, scalable, and flexible enterprise application
integration capabilities. At the core of ZBE is its network
layer which can be used to rapidly integrate any existing protocol
as well as model new ones. Whenever the need arises to model
a new protocol, the asynchronous, multiplexed and two-way remote
object protocol (ROP) can be used to quickly implement it. Because
the ROP is used with object-level abstractions, changes can
be made easily, and new features added, without having to deal
with the design restrictions and application development complexities
of a custom protocol.
Out of the box, ZBE supports a large number
of service protocols: HTTP, FTP, SMTP, LDAP, DNS, SOCKSv4, SSH,
IRC, telnet, POP3, AOL s instant messaging and more. This allows
developers to use these protocols immediately, without having
to spend time re-implementing them. In addition, ZBE can talk
to multiple, industry standard DBMS. It also can be used to
communicate with COM servers and to control and integrate with
standard Windows applications (Word, Excel, etc.).
Unlike other frameworks, that are designed to address a specific domain -
email, Web sites, Web services - ZBE is designed to support
both multiple frameworks and multiple protocols at the same
time. Thus, ZBE can be used to implement web sites, web services,
email servers, and instant messaging servers. Moreover, these
services can all run in the same process.
Among the services already implemented with
ZBE/Twisted are:
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Distributed hash tables |
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Distributed
web applications |
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Distributed
web servers |
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Real-time
web chat and graphical chat clients |
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Remote document batch processing |
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Protocol
Proxies |
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Notification
Agents |
There are several advantages and benefits to the ZBE platform:
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Provides a highly efficient communications protocol |
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Supports true asynchronous, two-way communication without conflicts
with firewalls |
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Supports
major protocols and services out of the box |
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Facilitates
rapid development of extensions to support other protocols
and services |
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Integrates
with multiple platforms |
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Is
a commercially supported version of an open-source platform
- Twisted |
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Uses
a capabilities-based model for simple and practical implementation
of business process and workflow management |
All these combine to produce a work environment that allows
for fast development and deployment of network aware applications.
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