J2EE™ Technology in Practice: Building Business Applications With the Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition

2.1. The Evolution of Distributed, Multitier Applications

Applications in the networked economy tend to be multitier, server-based applications, supporting interaction among a variety of systems. These applications are distributed—that is, they run on several different devices, including mainframes for data access on the backend, servers for Web support and transaction monitoring in the middle tier, and various client devices to give users access to applications. Clients can include thick clients—stand-alone applications on the desktop—and thin clients, such as applications running in a browser on the desktop, applications running in personal digital assistants, even cell phones and other personal communications devices. For business-to-business ...