ITEC 4020 - L1: Intro and Architectures

Client

Device or software that requests data or services from a server, such as web browsers, mobile apps, or email clients.

Server

Powerful system that responds to client requests, delivering data or performing tasks while handling many users simultaneously.

Network Communication

The medium (usually the Internet) that enables data exchange between clients and servers using request-response patterns.

Two-Tier Architecture

Client communicates directly with a server, commonly used in database systems for data access and manipulation.

Three-Tier Architecture

Client communicates with an application server (business logic) which connects to a database server, improving scalability and maintainability.

MVC (Model-View-Controller)

Architecture pattern that separates data management (Model), business logic (Controller), and user interface (View).

Distributed System

Collection of independent computers that appear as one system, collaborating to accomplish tasks such as web services, emails, or e-commerce.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P)

Architecture where each node acts as both client and server, sharing resources directly (examples: BitTorrent, Napster).

Proxy Server

Intermediary server that caches or load-balances requests to improve performance and reduce server load.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Architecture where software is provided as services consumed via a service broker, increasing flexibility and modularity.

Cloud Computing

Delivery of applications and services over the internet, often accessed via thin clients with limited local resources.

Thin Client

Lightweight device with minimal local resources that relies on cloud servers for applications and processing.

Intranet

A private network with enforced security policies, typically protected by firewalls, used within organizations.

Internet

A vast global network of interconnected computers providing services such as WWW, email, file transfer, and multimedia.

IPv4

32-bit addressing scheme (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx), limited number of unique addresses leading to exhaustion issues.

IPv6

128-bit addressing scheme (xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx...), providing a vast number of unique addresses for modern devices.

Middleware

Software that hides heterogeneity of underlying systems, enabling communication across different platforms (examples: CORBA, RMI, SOAP).

Distributed Multimedia Systems

Systems that deliver real-time or on-demand digital media streams (examples: Netflix, Zoom, YouTube Live).

Transactional Systems

Systems that handle financial or business transactions across distributed networks while ensuring ACID properties.

Web Services

Software applications that provide functionality over the internet via standardized protocols such as SOAP and XML.

World Wide Web (WWW)

Evolving system for publishing and accessing information over the internet, based on HTML, URLs, and HTTP.

Web Browser

Software application that renders and displays web content for users, such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

Web Server

System that stores, processes, and delivers web pages to clients upon request.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language used to structure and present content on the web.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator used to identify and locate resources on the web, includes scheme, host, path, query, and fragment.

Scalability

The ability of a system to efficiently handle increasing users or resources while avoiding bottlenecks and resource exhaustion.

Failure Handling

Techniques such as redundancy, rollbacks, and retransmission used to ensure system functionality despite failures.

Transparency

System property that hides complexity from users; includes access, location, concurrency, replication, and scaling transparency.

Security

Protection against confidentiality breaches, integrity issues, and denial of service attacks.

ACID Properties

Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability – guarantees for transactional systems to ensure reliable operations.