Essay on The Importance of JAVA in the Client/Server Environment

Chapter 1

Abstract
This paper describes the impact of Java on the next generation of database systems. It is believed that Java will play a critical role in two complementary components of the DBMS: (a) user-defined extensions of the database server, (b) migration of query processing between server and client.

The Importance of JAVA in the Client/Server Environment: An Introduction
Several remarkable web applications require the involvement of HTTP servers and database servers. At the same time as most of the current research is on improving the performance of HTTP servers, however there is a focus instead on the challenge of adapting database servers to operate efficiently in a Java -enabled internet environment. Current relational and object-relational database systems are usually built with query-shipping client-server architecture. Queries are shipped from the client to the server, where they are processed, and the answers are sent back to the client for display. Over the last decade, database servers have also developed extensibility features new data types and new functions can be added to the system in a modular fashion (Beaugendre et al, 1998; Beguelin et al, 1991). These two trends in database software architecture need to react to recent advances in web technology. In particular, there are the following observations:

Web browsers are universal, making them the ideal client interface for all interactive applications, including database application. This brings a much wider audience in direct contact with database systems.
Most browsers support the Java Virtual Machine (Cap, 1994), which executes Java byte codes. Hence, Java has become a desirable implementation language for clients.

Because of the large number of users with diverse needs, the importance of extensible database systems has increased. The ease of extension also becomes an important issue, since most of the users do not have access to the database server.....................

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