21 What is a server?
Description
This article is from the Amiga Networking FAQ, by Richard Norman with numerous contributions by others.
21 What is a server?
A server is a computer which acts like a library for files, and programs. It can also be set up to allow users to change the information as well. Several programs and protocols exist for creating a server: Appleshare, NFS, Xwindows, FTP, news, gopher, WWW, DCE, SQL, and user written applications.
Appleshare and NFS make remote disks seem like local disks. Thus allowing a group of users to share disk space and information if so desired.
Xwindows is a device independent network terminal package which supports a graphical user interface. It can be thought of as an display server. The application can be run on one machine and the display served to any Xwindow device on the network. If Excel had a X window version it could be run on a Mac or PC and the display could be on any Xwindow device anywhere on the network. It could even be displayed on an Amiga using X11R4 .
FTP server software allows you offer a portion or all of your disk drive for remote access. Unlike Appleshare or X windows you cannot run applications remotely. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and file transfer is all that it does. It does provide a binary mode of transfer so that you can copy applications to your local hard drive or ram and then run them.
News, gopher, and WWW are special servers for information which require a client software package to access. They can be thought of as network databases. These are explained in other sections. G07
Database servers are usually custom written to fit a need such as inventory. SQL is standard query language and DCE is distributed computing environment. SQL and DCE can be used in vendor or user written applications to create or access multiple database servers. This allows the programmer to distribute the load across several machines. Also it allows for more seamless integration of data from several non-similar computer systems in a transparent manner to the user. For example, very few executives want to FTP to three or four machines to pull together the information for review. They tend to like to click on a weekly report button and have the program do all the work. Since SQL and DCE are standards, the weekly report program is somewhat shielded from hardware specifics or changes.
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