What is a network-based application?

When we speak of applications, we simply mean the things a computer or other tool can be used for. You are familiar with many applications, like word processing, email, Web browsing, and spreadsheet processing.

We can distinguish between network and stand-alone applications. For example, if you use Microsoft Word to write a letter and save it on your PC, both the program and the data are stored on your computer. Since your computer does not have to be connected to a network, this is an example of a stand-alone application.

In this class, our focus is on network applications -- applications in which either the program you are using or the data you are working with or both reside on a network (often, but not always, the Internet).

Network applications use a client-server architecture, where the client and server are two computers connected to the network. The server is programmed to provide some service to the client.

The client is typically a desktop, laptop or portable device like an Apple iPhone. The server can be any of these, but is typically a computer in a data center.

In most (though not all) network applications, the client computer runs a Web client program like Firefox or Internet Explorer, and the server runs a Web server program like Apache or Internet Information Server. Shared data would be stored on the server or a computer it could access.

Note that the user of a network application might be a computer, not a person. For example, a computer might query the server in a vending machine, checking to see if it was low on Doctor Pepper or Coke. Search engine companies like Google run client programs that constantly scan the Web, checking for new pages which can be indexed.

You can see two examples of network applications here. Note that one offers a service, but does not store data and the other offers a service and also stores data.

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