SIFT THIS -- Perhaps one of the more annoying buzzwords of 1998 was the bizarrely vague piece of software known as an "application server". It takes more than a simple keyword search on NEWS.COM to decipher actually what an application server does, but the answer is part of the one of the biggest changes in application development since Apple taught us about the graphical user interface.
Quick segue: You remember network computer, right? Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy were all giddy that they had an actually plan to chip away at the Wintel monopoly. 'The network is the computer' so why do you need a computer? Why not just a low-megahertz processor with no hard drive and a super fast network connection to a server which does all the work for you?
People hated the idea. When in the history of everything has anyone bought the argument that less is more? Why would casual users trust Sun or Oracle with storing their letters to Mom on corporate servers when they're already nervous about sending their listed phone number over the Internet? The network computer bombed, but it was entirely the fault of the fact that was a horribly bad idea. It was also partly because of a service provided by a new breed of servers, the application servers.
Chances are, you've already been using these application servers on a daily basis and don't even know it. This is due to the fact that application servers arose from the fact that your web browser simply doesn't provide a robust application environment. Netscape Communicator does a fine job perusing the latest Dilbert or glancing over technology news, but when it comes to behaving like an application, where a user is interacting and changing data, the browser comes up short.
Our report card is in! Read about it in "The Bitsifter Review" Take, for example, E-Trade. They're not just in the business of schlepping stock quotes over the web, they're providing a service to allow their users to maintain their portfolios over the web. When it comes to that sort of applications, browser-side cookies simply don't cut it. E-Trade needs a handy way of tracking session and state information, interacting reliably with a large databases which contain customer records, and it needs to be fault tolerant. The application server solves all of these problems in one clean package. Just like a web server is nimble at serving web pages, an application server easily manages the resources necessary for web applications.
While the core feature set of an application server is well defined, the bells and whistles are still in flux. Regardless, the application server fulfills a definite need in the expanding base of web applications that are being designed and deployed by every company interested in a paper-less office.
How did the application server kill the network computer? It's mostly the tunnel vision of Ellison and McNealy types who believed two things. First, that the browser was just an application on the desktop. Second, that their tools (Oracle and Java, respectively) were the gateway to the next computing paradigm. While both technologies are important to the growth of the net, they're simply not sitting on the desktop of every user who uses the net. See, thin computing is a lot thinner than everyone thought. The network computer is your browser, and the browser is your desktop.
september 7, 1998
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