An Encapsulated Eiffel Education Environment, based on Web Services

This paper explores some requirements for training/education environments for elementary object-oriented programming and discusses the applicability of Web Services for this purpose. It is shown how the encapsulated Web-interfaced nature of Web Services offers a very interesting object-oriented technology platform. This is illustrated by means of an implementation of an education environment for teaching Eiffel to first year Applied Economics Students. The benefits, but also the changes in the teaching process are discussed. The implementation is based on a unique combination of features of ISE Eiffel and Microsoft .NET.