Single Tiered Browser Based Application Developmentif you are interested in any of the following:
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Browser based database applications have typically encompassed a variety of technologies and skills. This style of computing is a variant on the client server model, but varies in many ways from some client/server implementations because each transaction with the server is atomic. In simple terms this means that each server response to a client request is carried out, the data being returned to the client, and as far as the server is concerned, that is the end of the transaction. In this model, the client is a browser and the server is typically a web server supporting a connection to a database or a series of individual programs. Unix implementations often include an interface to the client by using a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) program or script, whereas a Microsoft implementation may well include ISS supporting active server pages. In all cases, there are methods of passing information between the client and the server via an http protocol. Today's browsers offer a rich variety of styles of user interface previously unavailable to designers of more traditional applications. With the large number of commercial, shareware and freeware authoring products around, it seems reasonable to use these layout and authoring tools to design the client interface. Problems often arise though in the transition between the design, getting the desired look and feel, and then making all the necessary changes to connect the design into a database. Different skills are often required here, ranging from database design to Database Administration, to learning SQL, to mastering server side scripting.
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Most of today's popular desktop database development products having been around for several years in one form or another. In fact most were around long before the Internet was as popular and as well adopted as it is now. While many are extremely admirable in their range of features, they all have had to be adapted to work with Internet or Intranet style applications, atomic transactions, and the feature rich capabilities of the modern browser. SQL Database vendors on the other hand have been busily promoting their wares as SQL is by design an an atomic server based solution. However the database alone is insufficient, as server side scripting, a web server and various other technologies are needed to return data back to a client in a format that the client can understand. The formats are normally based around HTML, or more recently DTHML. In all cases there either need to be several specialists in the different disciplines.
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Our background is primarily in server based technology, and we specialise in providing 4GL and rapid application development software tools to enable our customers to develop applications quickly. During our more recent product developments we contemplated how to provide a rich user interface to our server products without requiring new users needing to learn anything but a minimum of our proprietary syntax. We came to the conclusion that, our user interface should primarily comprise the kinds of object users of Windows are familiar with, but more importantly, we wanted just about anyone to be able to produce a user interface. For this reason we decided that the main user interface for applications should be a browser.
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Background