The client building block runs the side of the application. It runs on an Operating System (OS) that provides a Graphical User (GU to the Oriented User Interface (OOUI) and that can access distributed client wherever they may be. The operating system st often passes the buck The and the also runs a component of the Distributed Management (DSM ele ment. This could be anything from a simple agent on a managed PC to the entire front-end of the DSM application on a managing station.
The server building block runs the server side of the application. The server application typically runs on top of some shrink-wrapped server software package. The five contending server platforms for creating the next generation of client/server applications are SQL database servers, TP Monitors, groupware servers, object servers, and the Web. The server side depends on the operating system to interface with the middleware building block that brings in the requests for service. The server also runs a DSM component. This could be anything from a simple agent on a managed PC to the entire back-end of the DSM application (for example, it could provide a shared object database for storing system management information)
The middleware building block runs on both the client and server sides of an application. We broke this building block into three categories: transport, stacks, network operating systems (NOSs), and service-specific middleware Middleware is the nervous system of the client/server infrastructure. Like the other two building blocks, the middleware also has a DSM software component