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The content of this paper is based on a research done at the Faculty of Information and Communication of Tshwane University of Technology. The focus of this research was using web-based portal system for the improvement of innovation and development in agriculture sector. The objective of this paper is to investigate web-based, distributed systems architecture technologies, in order to find a feasible and reusable architectural framework to build a Knowledge Support system for agricultural virtual communities.

The research was conducted by searching, finding, confirming and defining the system architectural requirements, paradigms and implementation technologies of the Knowledge Support system. The author demonstrated that the technically complex nature of the web-based distributed system is caused by the integration of systems and interoperability of functionalities. It is also argue that Service-Oriented architecture paradigm and Web services technology are suitable for web-based, distributed system architecture development. Based on Service-Oriented paradigm and Web services technology, this paper provides an architectural framework for building a Knowledge Support system for the agricultural virtual communities.