Trader supported distributed office applications

Comfortable and effective working applications are required in large open distributed environments. Therefore traders are becoming more and more interesting - as they deliver a more precise overview of available services as well as allowing the integration of QoS attributes of service offers. Distributed office applications - as described here - promise to use the potentials of modem heterogeneous network systems for a more flexible and reliable control of office workflows. Thus, an appropriate object-oriented trader (X*-Trader) is presented. It uses the DC++ extension of OSF/DCE. Its architecture, interfaces and functionality are discussed. Second, our system for design and decentralized control of distributed office applications (CodAlf) is introduced (also a DC++ based system). Furthermore an extension for the management of standardized application server interfaces (a type management system) is introduced. Finally, the integration of the X*-Trader in such a representative distributed system is shown.