Finding a substrate for federated components on the Web

Recent developments in software component technology have renewed the promise of reusable software. Combining this with the possibilities of sharing simulation results and models using the Internet makes these new developments all the more important, particularly for Web-based simulation. Interoperability standards and data interchange standards (e.g., XML) help facilitate having simulation models interact with other simulation models as well as other information technology components. This paper examines newer component technologies such as Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) and Jini in a search for an ideal substrate for Web-based simulation. Components will need distributed capabilities as well as the ability to flexibly and dynamically join an existing group of interacting components (referred to as a federation)