On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 03:54:49PM +0200, srdjan wrote:
> Maybe this is the best explanation
> http://mindprod.com/jgloss/thinclient.html#THINCLIENT
That's basically correct, but somewhat out-dated and very limited
in viewpoint (it looks like it was written before servlets and JSP,
for starts).
The term "thin client" came about when people started building
really complex web applications, instead of using custom-code GUI
applications in client-server software.
Client-server specifically means a relationship; the server is a
program that's providing something to the client upon request, the
client is the program that's making the request. This is one of those
slippery little nuances that most people just ignore.
In common use (especially among the sort of people who invent
terms like "thin client"), a client-server application is one with a
custom-coded GUI application as the client, providing all of the
user-interface work and doing some work at the user's machine, and
contacting the server as necessary to load and save data.
Early on, most applications were some sort of terminal emulation
(i.e. vt100 or IBM 3270). X-windows is in a whole weird category by
itself, pumping all of the graphical UI through the net. For various
reasons, it never got really commonly accepted in the corporate world.
Client-Server was the next big deal, and then the web came along.
A webbrowser is itself a client in this worldview, it's just a
client that does something very general (displaying HTML). People
started noticing that using a web-browser based UI made for pretty
fast and effective development, so they started calling this approach
"thin client", meaning there very little custom code on the client.
The term "thick client" then came about to mean the old-fashioned,
non-thin-client, with custom-coded GUI.
--
Steven J. Owens
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"I'm going to make broad, sweeping generalizations and strong,
declarative statements, because otherwise I'll be here all night and
this document will be four times longer and much less fun to read.
Take it all with a grain of salt." - Me at http://darksleep.com
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