Architecture Evolution: From Web-based to Service-oriented Architecture
P.J. Jakovljevic - September 19, 2006

Extending Applications to the Web

Pre-Internet client/server technology relied on healthy communications between the machines involved, and local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs) became an expense and a management headache for most companies. Moreover, updating software versions, particularly on the numerous distributed personal computers (PCs), became an almost unsolvable problem. Many information technology (IT) departments have thus moved toward Internet- or intranet-based technology as a solution. In this approach, communications utilities provide the wide area communications backbone, and PCs merely communicate the uniform resource locators (URLs) to reach the servers they need help from. Software nuggets coded in the Java (or any other web-friendly) language that runs on the PC clients gets downloaded when needed, ensuring that it is always the latest version. With an Internet-only enterprise system in place, client-side software upgrades become unnecessary, while web browser-based applications significantly simplify the training. Tying together far-flung locations of an enterprise becomes simpler too...