XML by Example

Servlets

The first Web servers were simply file servers. As illustrated in Figure A.4,

a browser would request a file from the server and the server would return

it. The browser would render the file onscreen. If the file included hyper-

links, the user could point and click to request more files.

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Appendix A

Figure A.4: Serving files

Most Web sites are still being developed according to this model, which has

the advantage of simplicity.

The major limitation to this model, however, is that these Web sites are sta-

tic. For the user, interaction is limited to following hyperlinks. A user can-

not query a Web site and receive an answer based on that query ...