Portal replication for Web application availability via SOAP

The interoperability of SOAP (Simple Access Object Protocol) has eased the provision of B2B (business to business) solutions where Web applications (Web form submission via browser) are only suitable for supporting B2C (business to client). As many services exist that are delivered to clients via Web applications, enabling the delivery of such services via SOAP to provide B2B solutions is desirable. One mechanism for achieving this is via the use of portals. A portal may provide clients with a single point of access to geographically distributed services and tailor such services to satisfy client requirements. As a single point of access to many services, a portal may present a single point of failure. The provision of fault-tolerant portals may be viewed as essential by an organization. This paper describes a portal suitable for exhibiting Web applications as SOAP-based services and presents an approach for replicating portals to overcome the problem of a portal representing a single point of failure.