BadBlue

Position Paper: BadBlue Platform Approach

October 2, 2000

Doug Ross, Chief Technology Officer

A Web Server in every device

The BadBlue philosophy is a simple one: a web server in every device. The core of the BadBlue platform is a tiny, search-enabled web server that can be extended and customized in support of diverse application requirements. There are many strategic reasons for this approach:

  • Ubiquitous access
  • Open standard for connectivity and bi-directional communication
  • Emerging standard for component interaction
  • Extensible and customizable
  • Disconnected/semi-connected application serving

In short, providing web-serving capability in a range of devices is compelling for a variety of reasons. The purpose of this paper is to describe the underlying strategies that led to the creation of the BadBlue platform and to describe emerging trends that seem to favor the approach.

Ubiquitous access

During the advent of peer-to-peer technologies, most organizations created proprietary protocols and client packages designed to “lock in” users. Beginning with the groundbreaking file-sharing package Napster, the trend towards highly specialized communications mechanisms and highly specialized client packages has continued. Today, newer packages such as Gnutella, FreeNet, Groove and others have continued to embrace this trend.

Why would these organizations approach the problem this way? The reasons are varied and many of the arguments are sound. For instance, Napster could reason that the HTTP protocol is not sufficiently robust to handle automated resumption of an interrupted download. Or Groove could argue that standard protocols are neither rich in interactive support nor integrated adequately for the wide variety of applications that it supports.

BadBlue believes that these arguments are tenuous at best. Because of the fascinating feature “war” that has been waged over the last few years between Microsoft and Netscape, one could easily argue that the web browser has improved faster than any other category of client software.

This rapid rate of improvement addresses many of the original issues that the early peer companies attempted to avoid with their proprietary approaches. For example, newer versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer support specialized HTTP caching that can resume interrupted downloads.

Further, wide ranges of devices are gaining the ability to perform sophisticated web browsing. Compaq’s hand-held iPaq (a Windows CE device), for example, integrates a full-featured Internet Explorer browser for wireless surfing. In the opinion of the BadBlue technology lead team, the trend towards conventional HTTP browsing - as the hub of the net experience - will continue unabated.

For reasons of rapid improvement and ubiquitous access, the heart of the BadBlue platform is a tiny, yet powerful, web server that implicitly understands standard publishing and application-serving methodologies. Therefore, virtually any device capable of browsing can leverage BadBlue-powered solutions.

Open standard for connectivity and bi-directional communication

Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) has quickly assumed the role of most heavily used protocol on the Internet. Because of its wide range of capabilities and its extensibility, HTTP has become a kind of lingua franca for publishing, application serving and bi-directional data transfer.

In short, due to its extraordinary popularity and heavy use, HTTP has become the central theme for rapid improvements in software (e.g., browsers, application serving, etc.), network infrastructure (e.g., Akamai, Digital Island, etc.), hosted applications (e.g., Corio, LoudCloud, etc.) and hardware (e.g., Cisco, Compaq, etc.).

BadBlue believes that failure to leverage these HTTP-centric improvements will result in impaired growth and limited acceptance for non-HTTP-enabled technologies.

Emerging standard for component interaction

While component standards have existed for years, the gulf between Microsoft-based component technology (COM) and non-Microsoft (CORBA) components has become more pronounced. Neither interacts seamlessly with the other and both have significant drawbacks due to complexity of implementation, scale/deployment issues and other practical reasons.

For these reasons, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) appears to be the emerging cross-platform standard for component interoperability. In short, SOAP utilizes XML over HTTP to provide an easily understood, yet very powerful, framework for communication between resources.

BadBlue believes that emerging HTTP-based protocols such as SOAP will become the dominant approaches for marshaling network-based, cross-platform resources.

Extensible and customizable

In general, proprietary client software packages can neither be extended nor customized (save for aesthetic makeovers such as “skins”). Software packages that utilize a standard web-serving approach – and a browser as the fundamental user interface platform - can be infinitely customized and tailored to vertical markets.

Further, web-based application serving technologies rapidly improve and cross-pollinate. Systems such as CGI, ISAPI, JRun, PHP and many others have evolved to meet the needs of an extraordinary range of applications.

BadBlue believes that support for a wide range of third-party tools and systems will yield a superior level of extensibility and customizability in support of vertical markets and general application development.

Disconnected/semi-connected application serving

An emerging need for corporate IT departments is that of disconnected application serving. In spite of the trend towards “always on” wireless modems (e.g., CDPD with fixed monthly connect fees), connectivity is still impossible in many locations: inside a building, on the subway, on an airplane… to name but a few.

Consistency in enterprise application deployment is dictating the requirement for local web serving. Many applications must tolerate an environment in which disconnected or sporadically connected operation is a necessary evil. Therefore, IT departments will deploy small-footprint web servers which drive applications on physically remote and disconnected devices.

BadBlue believes that workers of the future will use web-enabled applications - whether off-line or online. This will enable a consistency in enterprise application development and deployment... whether wired into the network - or physically disconnected - browser-based applications will be ubiquitous.

BadBlue Enterprise Edition

BadBlue Enterprise Edition is a tiny, full-featured web server that runs on Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000. It lets corporations create and distribute web-based applications that leverage standards such as CGI, ISAPI, PHP and a variety of other standard extensions.

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