Developing Web Applications
Developing Web Applications |
|
Customers are beginning to demand global access to the information they need, both public and personal. Users increasingly want to use a single client application for their information access needs, and they rely on the versatility of the network and servers to provide content and services. Users will come to depend on these applications and want them to be universally available; they might even want to replace local applications on their desktop systems.
Consequently, there is likely to be an explosion of HTML-based server applications to feed the ubiquitous availability of the powerful Internet client. Applications will be factored into user interface–only client components (with little software required beyond the standard Internet browser), and a middle tier of server components that have no user interface and that provide services to the local desktop or across the Internet.
The following sections describe the roles that the client and middle-tier play in distributed Internet and intranet applications. The third tier is discussed in Data Access and Transactions in this book.