TIER-NEUTRAL DEVELOPMENT OF HYPERTEXT BASED APPLICATIONS

摘要

A tier-neutral development mechanism for network-based applications is provided. An application created using the mechanism includes a plurality of hypertext pages (item 25), at least some of which incorporate executable components. The application is invoked by a hypertext request for a page from a browser running on a client tier (20a). An application server (24a) responds to the request by retrieving the requested page and assigning any components incorporated therein to the proper tier for execution. The mechanism provides a single model by which any executable component can be specified by an application developer for execution on any tier on the network or made subject to an automatic, dynamic tier assignment by the application server (24a). Components of a given application can be distributed across, and specified for execution on, three or more different tiers and moved from tier to tier. An application developer can use a conventional hypertext editor to integrate selected components into extended hypertext pages to create an application.