IBM WebSphere: Deployment and Advanced Configuration

Thin Clients

Thin clients are traditional Java applications that are run by the execution of a main() method. Thin clients are often launched by batch or shell commands that initialize the environment by setting variables such as CLASSPATH and JAVA_HOME. They do not run inside a container, but they do require JAR files containing WAS runtime classes to be installed in order to access WAS.

The advantage of thin clients is that they are lightweight and easier to distribute, and they run faster than thicker clients. They are also quite functional as proper clients. They can call EJBs using the fully qualified JNDI name, including the location of the name server. Some server-like things, such as various J2EE services normally provided by the application ...