Analysis of B/S structure and C/S structure and future trend

Both C/S and B/S described in this article are applicable to application systems.

The C/S structure, that is, the client/server (Client/Server) structure mode. servers usually use high-performance PCs, workstations, or minicomputers, and large database systems, for example, Oracle, DB2, Sybase, and SQL Server, a dedicated client software must be installed on the client.

The C/S structure is a system that uses the C/S structure when network communication is generated, the client is separated from the server, and the client has a strong computing capability, you can put some work on the client, make full use of the client's resource advantages, and reduce the computing pressure on the server. In the early stage, the C/S structure system became popular. The C/S structure itself has advantages such as fast response speed, desktop-based operations, and easy maintenance, therefore, many software with high operational and response speed requirements, such: financial Software and supermarket software still use the C/S structure (when many excellent financial and supermarket software are excluded from using the B/S structure ). Of course, there are many other reasons why financial software and supermarket software use the C/S structure, such as a unified financial system and the same sales model. However, most software based on the C/S structure still fails to get rid of the biggest defect of the C/S structure. The upgrade is difficult and the maintenance cost is high. Almost all clients need to be upgraded each time the customer requests a change. I have seen with my own eyes the case of software upgrade and maintenance costs dragging down the software company, and experienced the customer's final selection of B/S structure software due to the difficulty of C/S structure upgrade and maintenance. Despite this, the C/S architecture software still has its own advantages in response speed and operability.

B/S structure, that is, browser/server (Browser/Server) structure mode. servers also use high-performance PCs, workstations, or minicomputers. Most systems still need to use databases, the difference from the C/S structure is that the client is hosted by a browser.

The B/S structure appears after the browser is mature and a set of standard expressions (HTML) have been formed in the industry, the B/S structure software solves the difficulty of upgrading and maintaining the C/S structure. Even if user requirements change frequently, the client does not need to upgrade the software every time, enter the access address of the system to obtain the latest software (except for ActiveX and other control upgrades ). Because the cost of upgrade and maintenance of B/S structure software is greatly reduced, almost all new systems are now using B/S structure, while software companies are considering reducing costs, the customer experience is hardly considered, so people often say that "We really want to consider the customer experience, but the huge maintenance cost forces us to give up thinking about the C/S structure ". However, the company will gradually find that the cost of upgrade and maintenance is almost all added to the development cost, and the customer is used to table-based convenient operations and quick response, for software with a B/S structure with poor interaction, software companies have to take various measures to provide customer experience. As a software gradually matures, it is also growing (regardless of the resources occupied by the software itself or runtime), and eventually becomes bloated. The emergence of Ajax solves some problems. asynchronous refresh makes the page do not have to be refreshed every time, and the customer does not need to submit a piece of data every time, but there is still a lack of operability, as a result, the concept of rich clients has been gradually proposed, not only for the customer experience, but also for the limitations of server computing capabilities and a considerable number of customers do not have the ability to purchase large servers, the rich client puts some computing on the client, which relieves the computing pressure on some servers. However, the rich client has no mature development mode and the development cost is high.

Currently, I am using a bank's online banking function (to avoid mentioning the name of this bank). I found that it adopts the combination of B/S and C/S, the operability of B/S has been greatly improved, but there is still a client upgrade problem. Every time the online banking function is increased, You need to download and install the new client again. This combination of B/S and C/S may be a good solution to the current B/S defect. The client upgrade may refer to ActiveX, or directly download without installation; after all, B/S itself is actually the way to download a new page each time and then execute it.