HTTP tunneling with servlets

The corporate firewall is a double-edged sword. It helps prevent unauthorized access to the corporate Web services, but can disable access for legitimate clients. Due to the number of safety measures taken by system administrators, HTTP has become the universal entry mechanism to the corporate network. Where technologies such as CORBA and DCOM have failed because of the firewall, technologies such as SOAP have been developed to provide safe and reliable access through firewall protection. This article explores an alternative to SOAP, the use of Java objects over HTTP. In addition, it uses J2EE servlet technology as server-side middleware to the business data.