Raven: Extending HTML for Peer-to-peer Synchronous Applications

The Raven architecture provides object replication for any object system that implements object properties and methods. In the current Windows Internet Explorer implementation, it is particularly tightly integrated with HTML, allowing simple, rapid development of multi-user applications in a web page. Raven uses an XML schema approach to describing the objects to be shared among clients. The XML schemas determine which properties on the objects should be replicated and which methods should be remoted. In addition to the overall system design, this paper shows details of two examples: a simple chat application and a Spacewar game. It also provides detailed descriptions of some of the internal algorithms used.