Programming Erlang, 2nd Edition

Introducing Client-Server

Client-server architectures are central to Erlang. Traditionally, client-server architectures have involved a network that separates a client from a server. Most often there are multiple instances of the client and a single server. The word server often conjures up a mental image of some rather heavyweight software running on a specialized machine.

In our case, a much lighter-weight mechanism is involved. The client and server in a client-server architecture are separate processes, and normal Erlang message passing is used for communication between the client and the server. Both client and server can run on the same machine or on two different machines.

The words client and server refer to the roles that these ...