Computing 205/406 & IT8

Tutorial #20

1. What[1] is client/server computing? What distinguishes client/server computing from any other form of distributed data processing?

2. Discuss the rationale for locating applications on the client, the server, or split between the client and the server.

3. What is Middle-Ware? Do you know of any examples?

4. What is the difference between connection-oriented and RPC communications for client/server computing?

5. In the lecture, it was mentioned that XDR solves a similar problem to ASN.1/BER. In what sense is this true? Do some research[2] and discover how XDR operates. Does this seem more or less efficient than ASN.1/BER?

6. In the lecture, it was claimed that the World Wide Web is an excellent example of client/server "done right". In what sense is this true, and is the WWW model more widely applicable as a model of client/server?

7. (Philosophical question) In the lecture, it was claimed that the PCs in the computer labs at Bendigo are not in a client/server relationship with the Novell servers, in the modern sense of the term. In what sense is this true? Is it necessarily true? What about the relationship between the Indy workstations and the redgum NFS server?

8. (Deeply philsophical, non-examinable question) Do you believe all of the awful things that your lecturer said about data centres and their relationship with management? Why, or why not? Why is client/server computing the most fashionable game in town? Does it have a future - why, or why not?

Practical exercises:

• Investigate RPC.

• Discover some PC or Mac programming languages which support client/server programming.

• You can read more about client/server computing in the newsgroup comp.client-server.