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As technology advanced, connecting machines and sharing
data became an important goal and a pressing reality for
application developers.
Simple networks formed and new
applications and application architectures arose. Since
networking and resource sharing introduced larger and more
complex problems into the development environment, and because
the inherent flaws in monolithic applications were becoming
clear, a new
approach that captured the nature of these new applications
was devised. And because the "applications" had grown, so
had the stages of an application from an abstract viewpoint.
Client-Server applications became all the rage. And the
monolithic applications started to fade into the past like
some forgotten dinosaurs.
In the client-server model, applications were broken apart,
distributing processing between client computers
and server computers.
As client-server applications became feasible, so too
did the layering of the technology become more important.
In the client server model, the three layers of an
application could more easily be isolated. In fact,
such isolation became even more crucial as scalability,
distribution and mainenance became even more complex.
Another factor in the separation of the layers came
from the data. As sharing data became essential to
faster and wider information distribution, the network
systems drove applications to evolve into data sharers.
Rather than store data locally, in a client-server application,
data would be stored in a central repository where it could
be accessed by multiple clients who wished to "share" it.
The benefit of this architecture was that it gave access
to large numbers of users so that they could store and
retrieve important data in a consistent and stable manner
generally from a "fully loaded" application on the client
machine. Order processing, accounts, internal systems; email
and database applications became the norm in the
client-server era.
The traditional client server applications enabled, and
encouraged, developers to build feature rich solutions
that integrated key technologies in a single point of
access.
Typically a developer would focus on delivery of the
graphical user interface and storing data in repositories
that enabled users to share data. Technologies like ODBC
(Open Database Connectivity), Visual Basic, Visual C and
MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) helped developers
build applications in short timescales that could access
and share data.
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