Access Database Design and Programming, Second Edition

The Client/Server Architecture

The client/server model of a database system is really very simple, but its meaning has evolved somewhat through popular usage. The client/server model is shown in Figure 7.3.

Figure 7-3. The client/server mode example

The server in a client/server model is simply the DBMS, whereas the client is the database application serviced by the DBMS. (We could also think of Visual Basic and Access as clients of the Jet DBMS server.)

The basic client/server model says nothing about the location of the various components. However, since the components are distinct, it is not uncommon to find them on different computers. The two most common configurations are illustrated in Figure 7.4 and Figure 7.5. The distributed client/server model (Figure 7.4), wherein the client is on one computer and the server and database are on another, is so popular that it is usually simply referred to as the client/server model. The remote database model (Figure 7.5) refers to the case in which the client and server are on the same computer, but the database is on a remote computer.

Figure 7-4. The distributed client/server model example

Figure 7-5. The remote database example