The growth of the Internet and its related technologies has given companies new ways to extend client/server computing applications to both internal and external users. Information and resources that exist on internal, proprietary systems can now be accessed from a broader user base, giving corporations more ways to leverage their current investments in technology.
Enterprise networking is also experiencing a resurgence in popularity; the size of corporate databases that store mission-critical data continues to grow, as do sales of mainframe and AS/400 host systems. As companies continue to use these host systems for mass data storage, transaction processing, and other applications, many organizations are investigating methods of integrating host networks with the web.
This chapter describes web technology and how SNA Server can be integrated into web-based networks.