INTRODUCTION TO CLIENT/SERVER ENVIRONMENT

A networking environment that is made up of clients and servers running applications designed for client/server architecture. Numerous applications run in a client/server environment, this means that client computers (computers forming part of the network) contact a server, generally a very powerful computer in terms of input/output, which provides services to the client computers. These services are programmes which provide data such as the time, files, a connection, etc. The services are used by programs client programs which run on client computers. This is why the term "client" is applied (FTP client, email client, etc.), where a program is designed to run on a client computer, capable of processing data received from a server (in the case of the FTP client we are dealing with files whereas for the email client we deal with email email).

BASIC ELEMENTS
A CSDB (Client-Server Database) system consists of three primary software components (aside from the network software and operating systems of the computers in question): the client application (also called the front end), the data access layer (also called middleware), and the database server (also called a database engine, DBMS, data source, or back end). The client application is responsible for accepting input from the user, submitting a query to the database server based on that input, receiving results from the server, formatting them, and presenting them to the user. The data access layer is relatively transparent to the user, but may be very apparent to the developer of the client app. It provides for the app an API used to submit queries to a data source without much concern for the network between them. The database server accepts queries from clients, processes them concurrently, and returns results. There are a number of different query languages around, by far the most prevalent of which is SQL. (By the way, contrary to conventional wisdom, SQL doesnt stand for anything in particular. The S isnt for standard or structured, although the QL is thought to stand for query language.)

HOW IT WORKS?

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Client-server computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or work loads between service providers (servers) and service requesters, called clients. Often clients and servers operate over a computer network on separate hardware. A server machine is a high-performance host that is running one or more server programs which share its resources with clients. A client does not share any of its resources, but requests a server's content or service function. Clients therefore initiate communication sessions with servers which await (listen to) incoming requests. The client-server model has become one of the central ideas of network computing. Many business applications being written today use the client-server model. So do the Internet's main application protocols, such as HTTP, SMTP, Telnet, DNS. Each instance of the client software can send data requests to one or more connected servers. In turn, the servers can accept these requests, process them, and return the requested information to the client. The most basic type of client-server architecture employs only two types of hosts: clients and servers. This type of architecture is sometimes referred to as two-tier. It allows devices to share files and resources. The two tier architecture means that the client acts as one tier and application in combination with server acts as another tier.

CLIENT/SERVER SYSTEM OPERATION

A client/server system operates as outlined in the following diagram:

The client sends a request to the server using its IP address and the port, which is reserved for a particular service running on the server. The server receives the request and responds using the client IP address and port.

TYPES OF CLIENTS AND SERVERS

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

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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.

ADVANTAGES OF THE CLIENT/SERVER MODEL

The client/server model is particularly recommended for networks requiring a high degree of reliability, the main advantages being:

1. Centralized Resources: given that the server is the centre of the network, it can
manage resources that are common to all users, for example: a central database would be used to avoid problems caused by redundant and inconsistent data.

2. Improved Security: as the number of entry points giving access to data is not so
important.

3. Server Level Administration: as clients do not play a major role in this model,
they require less administration.

4. Scalable Network: thanks to this architecture it is possible to remove or add

clients without affecting the operation of the network and without the need for major modification.

5. Ease of Updating the Data: Since data storage is centralized, updates to that data are far easier to administer than what would be possible under a P2P (Peer-toPeer) paradigm. Under P2P environment, data updates may need to be distributed and applied to each peer in the network, which is both time-consuming and errorprone, as there can be thousands or even millions of peers.

DISADVANTAGES OF THE CLIENT/SERVER MODEL

Client/Server architecture also has the following drawbacks:

1. Traffic congestion on the network: This has been an issue since the
inception of the client-server paradigm. As the number of simultaneous client requests to a given server increases, the server can become overloaded. Contrast that to a P2P network, where its aggregated bandwidth actually increases as nodes are added, since the P2P network's overall bandwidth can be roughly computed as the sum of the bandwidths of every node in that network.

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2. Increased Cost: due to the technical complexity of the server. 3. Lacks The Robustness Of A Good P2P Network: Under client-server, should a critical server fail, clients requests cannot be fulfilled. In P2P networks, resources are usually distributed among many nodes. Even if one or more nodes depart and abandon a downloading file, for example, the remaining nodes should still have the data needed to complete the download

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