Tech Buzz: Client-Server Architecture evolution

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Technology / Topic : Client Server Architecture Evolution

Client: A client is an application or system that accesses a remote service on another computer system, known as a server, by way of a network.

Specific types of clients include web browsers, email clients, and online chat clients.

Server: A server computer is a computer, or series of computers, that link other computers or electronic devices together. They often provide essential services across a network, either to private users inside a large organization or to public users via the internet. For example, when you enter a query in a search engine, the query is sent from your computer over the internet to the servers that store all the relevant web pages. The results are sent back by the server to your computer.

Specific types of servers include web servers, ftp servers, application servers, database servers, name servers, mail servers, file servers, print servers, and terminal servers.

Most web services are also types of servers.

Why Client-Server Architecture evolved?

The evolution of Client-Server Computin has been driven by business needs, as well as the increasing costs for host (mainframe and midrange) machines and maintenance, the decreasing costs and increasing power of micro-computers and the increased reliability of LANs( Local Area Networks). 

In the past twenty years, there are dramatic improvements in the hardware and software technologies for micro-computers. Micro-computers become affordable for small businesses and organisations. And at the same time their performances are becoming more and more reliable. On the other hand, the drop in price for mainframe is growing at a slower rate than the drop in its price. Little developments have achieved with mainframes.

Client, Server and Technology

Client/server refers to the way in which software components interact to form a system that can be designed for multiple users. This technology is a computing architecture that forms a composite system allowing distributed computation, analysis, and presentation between PCs and one or more larger computers on a network. Each function of an application resides on the computer most capable of managing that particular function.

Tier	2 Tier	3-Tier	Web Oriented (N-tier)
Key Advantage	● Good application development speed. ● Most tools for 2-tier are very robust.  ● Two-tier architectures work well in relatively homogeneous environments with fairly static business rules.	● RPC calls provide greater overall system flexibility than SQL calls in 2-tier architectures. ● 3-tier presentation client is not required to understand SQL. This allows firms to access legacy data, and simplifies the introduction of new data base technologies. ● Provides for more flexible resource allocation.	● Different aspects of the application can be developed and rolled out independently. ● Servers can be optimized separately for database and application server functions. ● Servers can be sized appropriately for the requirements of each tier of the architecture. ● More overall server horsepower can be deployed.

Lets observe how client-server architecture evolved during the course of time:

Regards,
Suman  G