COM is useful in intranet environments and permits “inside the firewall” server side scripting environments to access the OpenROAD Server. However, it is limiting when you are trying to deploy OpenROAD client and eClient applications across the Internet since Distributed COM facilities do not run outside of a trusted environment. In addition, the Windows Mobile platform does not provide support for DCOM.

To provide more deployment options, OpenROAD provides a HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) routing option that provides a firewall-friendly alternative to DCOM for communication between an OpenROAD application and the OpenROAD Server. It allows calls to an OpenROAD Server to be serialized and routed over HTTP through a web server, which then deserializes and forwards the call to the OpenROAD Server. It then serializes the result and sends it back in an HTTP response. This process allows client, eClient, and mClient applications to be deployed in an Internet environment using traditional means to secure both the communications (HTTPS) and server-side access.