Internet Metaobject Protocol (IMOP): Weaving the Global Program Grid

Software applications are increasingly relying on networks to function, but making programs to interact over the network is still tedious and error-prone. Conventional technologies such as CORBA and the WS-* stack are complicated to use, whereas Restful style operations rely on costly ad-hoc developments on a per-service basis. We believe the problem lies in the lack of a network protocol that can solely and sufficiently address interoperability needs. In light of this, we developed Internet Metaobject Protocol (IMOP), a remote method invocation protocol for object-based resource representations. IMOP thoroughly defines operations required to facilitate interactions, from reflecting a resource´s definition to invoking its methods. It also rigorously defines the types of data passed between systems, including primitive types, composite value types, and reference types. All of these are programming language neutral.