Web Objects are used in Web Applications and provide a similar functionality in web applications that views provide in windows applications. A web object will either be a Web Browser Objects or a Web Service Object. Web Browser Objects (WBOs) are used with browser based applications; Web Service Objects (WSOs) are used to provide web-services. The conventional file extension for both types of web objects is .wo.
Web Objects are designed using the same principles used for views. A web object contains a DDO structure, which must be properly placed linked using the same rules applied to views. Since web objects are non-visual they will not use data entry objects to interact with the DDOs. Instead they will contain custom methods that perform the needed business processes. Those methods will send needed messages to the Data Dictionaries to perform all database processes.
Web Application interfaces used to access web-objects must be exposed to the Internet. As part of the development process, you must specify which methods inside of a web-object should be public. This referred to as publishing the web-interface. Web Browser objects expose this interface to the Active-Server Page being used to access it. Web Server Objects expose the interface as a web-service and formally makes it definition available as a service-description document (WSDL).
Just like views, web-objects can be created and tested individually. You can build a Web Object, test it in program and then assemble any number of web objects in to a single Web Application knowing that with proper encapsulation the single application will work as expected.
Web Browser Object and Web Service Object components both have a file extension of “.wo”.