On 24 Feb 2010 07:26:51 -0800, charl...@mcn.org (Charles Mills) wrote: >No, no, no. It is not productive that the mainframe veterans have one >definition for server and the rest of the world has a different one. Server >is a computer science architectural term. It has nothing to do with the size >or location of the box. An Intel chip could be a server and (in a given >system) a z/OS mainframe could be a client. > >If you were going to design a system that involved two or more cooperating >processes, you could design it as a big ol' free-for-all hodge-podge of >"this one does this and then that one does that" (kind of like this list >LOL). Or you could say "for the purposes of this system, this process will >make requests and that process will answer the requests." (It often works >out well to have many requestors making requests of one answerer.) > >The requestor is called a client and the answerer is called a server, no >matter how big or small it is and no matter where it sits. DB2 is a server. >An IBM mainframe is often a server, or more correctly, hosts multiple server >processes or subsystems.
People think a computer has to be either a client or a server. But computers can and do more than one thing. It's like defining someone as a boss or as an employee. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
