Client-Server Architecture

From Saferpedia

The Client-Server architecture is a distributed application sharing the processing between service suppliers called servers and elements requesting for services called clients. Servers and clients communicate using a computer network, usually via the Internet.

A server runs one or more server software sharing existent resources with clients. A client does not share any of its own resources, but calls server's resources. Clients initiate communication with servers and wait for their messages. To maintain the connection between client and server, whatever the pauses it's used the session concept, usually limited in time.

Description

The client–server architecture describes the relationship of cooperating programs in an application. The server component provides a function or service to one or many clients, which initiate requests for such services.

Functions such as email exchange, web access and database access, are built on the client–server model. Users accessing banking services from their computer use a web browser client to send a request to a web server at a bank. The balance is returned to the web browser client displaying the results to the user. 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, and DNS.

The interaction between client and server is often described using sequence diagrams. Sequence diagrams are standardized in the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

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

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.
Source: Wikipedia

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