Summary

Designing Distributed Applications is all about creating Cooperative Network Applications. Their aim is to promote the re-use of intranet and Internet applications and maintain the viability of applications in the face of change. Using Stephen's 5 Principles of Cooperative Network Application Development, you can create applications that can promote themselves on the network, sharing data and logic with clients of varying levels of sophistication. Using XML to define data exchange in such a way that future applications will also be able to negotiate an exchange format - even in the face of minor programming errors or evolving data definitions. Using LDAP this can take place on a network where we query for the services without knowing their location. The result is a distributed computing environment that will remain robust while users and resources are in flux.