Adherence to the fundamental principles outlined previously allows application developers to control the incorporation of a distributed computing model through well-defined integration points known as Web services. Utilizing services can be thought of as leveraging the power of the framework to expose user application code to the network through the platform. Creating a runtime platform consists of packaging the platform, and your services. Since Web services are inherently modular pieces of code, it is therefore possible to package and deliver your Web services as VA Smalltalk image components. The runtime architecture of Web services would then consist of a base platform image component, along with an image component for each service. Examples and instructions for packaging and runtime deployment are covered in later chapters.

Central to the platform idea is the Web services container, which is the architectural construct responsible for managing the life cycle of your services. The container was designed with pluggability in mind and there are numerous options that will allow you to customize your environment. Although you have briefly worked with the container in the 10 Minute Guide, this section will explore this framework in detail, explain its major components, and present several examples of customized deployment.