MECHANISM FOR AUTOMATICALLY ESTABLISHING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EXECUTABLE COMPONENTS OF A HYPERTEXT-BASED APPLICATION

摘要

A mechanism for automatically establishing connections between executable components of a hypertext-based application is provided. An application created using the mechanism includes a plurality of hypertext-based pages (4), at least some of which incorporate executable components. The application is invoked by a hypertext request (3) for a page form a browser running on a client tier (1). An application server (2) responds to the request (3) 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 (2). 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 (5) to integrate selected components into extended hypertext pages to create an application.