Client/server: Why? What? How?

This paper is an introduction to the general concept of client/server computing. It starts from one major problem that system architects face today, i.e. application integration. It explains how this leads to the concepts of communication buses, middleware technologies, application interfaces, object modeling, application encapsulation, application frameworks, and finally to a global system architecture based on the client/server model. The goal is to obtain an understanding of the above concepts and to properly articulate them; it is not to get into the nitty-gritty of the presented tools.