Handbook of Local Area Networks, 1998 Edition:LAN-based Application Development Issues and Solutions Click Here! Search the site:   ITLibrary ITKnowledge EXPERT SEARCH Programming Languages Databases Security Web Services Network Services Middleware Components Operating Systems User Interfaces Groupware & Collaboration Content Management Productivity Applications Hardware Fun & Games EarthWeb sites Crossnodes Datamation Developer.com DICE EarthWeb.com EarthWeb Direct ERP Hub Gamelan GoCertify.com HTMLGoodies Intranet Journal IT Knowledge IT Library JavaGoodies JARS JavaScripts.com open source IT RoadCoders Y2K Info Previous Table of Contents Next Section 6LAN-based Application Development Issues and Solutions It has always been the case that the true strength of LAN technology lies in the organization’s ability to use LANs to leverage newly enabled capabilities, providing the potential for orders of magnitude increases in business productivity. In today’s environment, the newly enabled capabilities center around distributed computing, including traditional distributed computing, and more recently, platform independent distributed computing. This section of the Handbook continues our exploration of LAN-based applications, but shifts the focus to issues related to in-house development of mainstream business applications that exploit LAN technologies. We begin our exploration of this topic by taking a look at platform independent distributed computing. In particular, the discussion of intranets that we started at the end of the previous section is continued in this section, beginning with Chapter 6-1, “Survival of the Fittest: The Evolution to Thin-Client Intranets.” This chapter discusses how Web technology, in conjunction with client/server technology, can be leveraged to enable the development of platform independent applications, including those that access legacy data. One of the more popular languages used for the development of thin-client, platform-independent applications is Java, a language developed and introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1995. Chapter 6-2, “Introduction to Java,” provides an overview of this language and its capabilities. Included are discussions of more advanced topics such as integrating Java with databases and bridging Java to ODBC and CORBA. Despite the popularity and promise of thin-client technologies, an understanding of traditional client/server fundamentals remains an essential ingredient for success. Chapter 6-3, “Client/Server: An Architectural Overview,” is intended to help readers develop a basic understanding of client/server technologies, including middleware products. Chapter 6-4, “Client/Server Technologies,” takes these concepts and discusses them in terms of two enabling technologies — the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) and the Object Management Group’s object management architecture (OMA). Regardless what technologies are employed to develop client/server applications, the use of simulation tools can help LAN managers make proactive choices on how to provide maximum network performance at optimal cost. Use of such simulators is the subject of Chapter 6-5, “Simulating Client/Server Performance.” An area of difficulty in the deployment of any distributed system is that of integrating heterogeneous data base management systems. One approach to this problem is to use a distributed object management system to interconnect heterogeneous data base systems. Chapter 6-6, “Using CORBA to Integrate Distributed Data Bases,” focuses on a specific distributed object management system for handling the communication of messages between objects in a distributed, multiplatform environment. 6-1Survival of the Fittest: The Evolution to Thin-Client Intranets JAN MURPHY Corporations are constantly generating information, and changing information, to stay current. They have to keep up with their customers and their competition, while keeping employees informed and up-to-date. It is because of this fast pace and the need to remain current that intranets, which are corporate internets, have become so popular. Intranets are a dynamic way to keep up with changing corporate information while keeping people in the corporation informed. The popularity of intranets focuses on their ease-of-use, ease-of-implementation, and central server maintenance—it’s a cost effective way to keep people informed. Intranets are created and centrally maintained by the corporate IS department using TCP/IP protocols, a common browser interface (HTML and HTTP), and a Web server (see Exhibit 6-1-1). Corporations are turning more and more to Web technology to solve their information problems and give access to business-critical legacy data—data that companies have invested millions of dollars to develop and maintain. Exhibit 6-1-1.   This chapter explores why intranets have become popular, the benefits of intranets over older technologies, the advantages and concerns of implementing intranet technologies, and the move toward Web-to-host access using thin-client solutions. THE INTERNET-INTRANET CONNECTION Intranets depend on the physical connections and interoperability of the Internet, which has been an established method of communication for more than a decade. Estimates for the number of current Internet users conservatively start at ten million active users, although the number of users with Internet access probably exceeds twenty million. A common statement describing the growth of the Internet is that it has doubled in size every year since the mid-1980s. What began as a Department of Defense research project in 1969 has become the communications medium of choice in the 1990s. Part of this explosive growth centers on the open standards and protocols that created the Internet—the set of guidelines that everyone follows concerning network physical layers, TCP/IP protocols used for connections, and the applications used to connect to the Internet. Another factor involves allowing corporate access to the Internet, which was originally limited to government, educational, and scientific groups. Without a doubt, though, the change that truly pushed corporations into using the Internet was the phenomena of the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web began as a research project at CERN (Conseil European pour la Recherche Nucleaire) in 1989 as a means for scientists to collaborate using the Internet. Two important products that have brought the World Wide Web into focus are: the release of NCSA’s (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) Mosaic Web browser in 1992, and the release of Netscape’s Navigator commercial Web browser in 1994. Previous Table of Contents Next Use of this site is subject certain Terms & Conditions. Copyright (c) 1996-1999 EarthWeb, Inc.. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited. Please read our privacy policy for details.