Client/Server Strategies

In this compelling new book, computer visionary David Vaskevitch shows today's managers how emerging technology will make their companies more competitive by empowering workers with the information needed to do their jobs faster and better.

By rightsizing information systems to client/server-based platforms, corporate reengineers at both large and small companies will dramatically improve access to information, increase productivity, and most importantly, gain strategic advantage.

Read this insider's guide to understand:

• How the next generation of client/server computers will make strategic information essential as a competitive tool
• When to pull the plug on your mainframe — and when to save it
• How the stand-alone PC/individual productivity model will be replaced by enterprise-wide information distribution through powerful, secure client-server networks
• The design techniques that will make building the next generation of distributed graphical systems possible
• A roadmap for taking maximum advantage of the rapid technical, organizational and personal changes driven by the PC revolution

For the first time, learn how these changes will really affect you, your job, and your company.

David Vaskevitch presents these complex issues in understandable terms that will appeal to both technical and business readers alike. Sometimes humorous, always stimulating and informative, Client/Server Strategies is the insider's guide to the business computing revolution.

• Introduction
• How Personal Computer Technology Will Change Businesses in the '90s
• How Big Is the Change, and How Do You Deal with It?
• Is This Book Really Worth Reading?
• Demystifying: Can Computers Be Understood?
• Part I: Crisis and Revolution
1. Midlife Crisis for an Industry
• Defining Meaning, Values, and Identity for Computers and Their Users
• 1900-1949: Electronic Calculators
• 1950s: Electronic Brain
• 1960s: Business Machine
• 1960s dreams
• 1960s disillusionment: Computer can't learn (yet)
• 1960s accomplishments: Computers for business
• 1970s: The Databased Corporation
• 1980s: The Beginning of the End and the End of the Beginning
• 1980s, Take One: An Adult Industry: Software Engineering for Mainframes Methodoloy
• Computer-aided software engineering
• 1980s, Take Two: Personal Computers — Are They Toys or Appliances?
• 1990s: Client/server and Distributed Computing
• Office automation
• Drawing the line
• A painful question
• A painful answer
• Tuning, Downsizing, Rightsizing, Downsizing After All
• Tuning
• Downsizing
• Rightsizing
• Downsizing after all
2. The Business Revolution of the '90s
• Physical Factories, Information Factories
• Assembly Lines and Bureaucracies
• Making Processes Better
• The Quality Goes In (Just) Before the Name Goes On
• Process Understanding, Process Improvement
• Self-Regulating Processes: Turning the World Inside Out
• Self-Managed Processes, Self-Managed teams
• The Office As Factory: Business Processes vs. Business Tasks
• The Virtual Sales Office
• Bureaucracy: A New World Model
3. Business Revolution, Technical Revolution: The Client/Server Office of the Future
• Freedom: The Need for Self-Control
• People (and dogs) need to be in control
• Computers and personal freedom
• Is the Revolution about the Client?
• You Can't Fool All the People All the Time
• Information at Your Fingertips
• Why Access (and Paradox and dBASE) Has No Access
• You're Responsible — Just Don't Ask Any Questions
• Into the Middle Ring
• Client/Server: It's about the Server
• Business Revolution, Technical Revolution
• A Different World
• Part II: The Technology: Demystifying Computers and Networks
4. GUI, UI: Can Computers Be Useable?
• The Intimidating Interface
• It's not your fault
• Great expectations
• Common User Interfaces
• Graphical Support: Virtual Reality
• Being there
• The computerized cockpit
• Direct Manipulation: Living in the Virtual World
• Something for everyone
• Drag and drop
• Double-click and property inspection
• One Person, One Computer
• Event-driven applications
• Input from all over
• So many choices, so little time
• Bitmaps, Character Maps, Pictures, and Bandwidth
• GUI 2000: Sound and Fury
• Speed
• Resolution
• Size
• Form
• GUI to Go
• Power
• Interaction technology
• Software
• Personal Computer, Personal Assistant; Electronic Desk, Electronic Agent
5. The Server: Client/Server the First Time Around
• Sharing Resources
• The Birth of the Network: Printer Sharing
• Server services
• Fooling the computer
• Logical Devices
• Sharing hard disk space
• Benefits of disk service
• Organizing Files Electronically
• Same system, more space
• Hierarchical directory structures
• File Sharing: The Server as Electronic Filing Cabinet
• Sharing the file, not the disk
• The file sharing environment
• Electronic Filing: One Small Step for Humankind
• From Passive to Active: The Server as Database Manager
• Three types of database
• Information sharing models
• Databases: Who Needs Them?
• Sharing with the team
• Communication and control
• Alternatives and excuses
• Advantages to the database
• Server/Servant
6. The Local-Area Network: A New Type of Computer
• Networks Inside Networks Inside Networks
• Eliminating the Ceiling, Smoothing the Steps, and Saving Your Job
• The Network Is the Computer: The Building Is the Box
• Seeing the LAN as a computer
• Seeing the building as a box
• Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis
• Bambi Meets Godzilla: Usability Versus Control
• Clothing the virtual world
• Making here meet now
• The lovable fawn
• There goes Tokyo
• Veneers: Transforming Lead into Gold
• The alchemist's tools
• Behind the smoke
• The Great Contradiction
• The Final Synthesis
• The Electronic Office
7. Wide-Area Networks: Connecting the World
• Wide-Are Networks: Fooling the Phone System
• How Many (Computers) Screens Should a User Have?
• Withstanding Nuclear Attack
• Packet Switching: Some Assembly Required
• May I Have Your Phone Number Please?
• No Reservations — We'll Just Play It By Ear
• Networking The World  — The Electronic Post Office
• Electronic Mail as an Agent of Cultural Change
• The three faces of e-mail
• Around the corner or around the world
• The Global Village: Marketplace or Library?
• To serve and protect
• The ARPAnet
• Where Have All the Post Offices Gone?
• E-mail via Einstein
• The vision spreads
• Building the Tower of Babel: The Impossible Takes a Little Longer
• The Internetwork
• "Information: what city, please?"
• Networks and Non-Networks
8. The Mainframe: The Technical Shift to Distributed Systems
• What Is a Mainframe?
• Big, Bigger, Biggest: How Much Is Enough?
• Batch Processing
• The future of batch processing
• Batch windows
• The growth of batch processes creates demand for bigger computers
• The Demand for Bigger, Faster Computers Continues
• The Scalability Problems
• Scaling a system to large demands
• Scaling a system to medium demands
• Scaling a system to small demands
• Integrating applications of different sizes and locations
• Grosch's Law
• The Computer Family Concept
• The IBM 360 family of computers
• The DEC VAX family of computers
• The Intel X86 family of microprocessors
• The Past Economic Incentive for Centralization
• Speed: How Fast Can It Go?
• Address Space: Room to Grow
• Address space affects computer throughput
• Differences in address space between mainframes and PCs
• Using address space efficiently
• Operating system support for memory
• Permanent Storage Capacity: Thanks for the Memories
• Types of mainframe permanent storage
• Benefits of automated permanent storage on mainframes
• Evolution of permanent storage on personal computers
• Permanent storage technology for PCs has unique advantages
• Throughout: How Many Items Can You Keep in the Air?
• Throughput for realtime transactions
• Throughput for batch programs
• Impacts of Grosch's Law
• Technical impacts of Grosch's Law
• Cultural impacts of Grosch's Law
• Central Planning: Is It Better in Theory or in Practice
• Lack of personal freedom for users
• Exceeding the capacity of mainframe power
• The drive for machine efficiency undercuts user efficiency
• The Repeal of Grosch's Law
• The experience curve
• Economies of scale with small computers
• Price competition makes small PCs the buy of the centory
• Is the Mainframe a Single Big Computer?
• Tasks of a mainframe
• The smaller computers inside of a mainframe
• Similarities between mainframes and other types of computer networks
• Tandem computers exploit the "cluster of computers" concept
• Grosch's Law: From Repeal to Full Reversal
• Multiprocessor servers
• Client/server systems as "the new mainframes"
• The Network As a multiprocessor server
• Eliminated centralized computing
9. Database: The Concept
• What Is a Database?
• What is a spreadsheet?
• Why all spreadsheet are databases but not all databases are spreadsheets
• Content gives meaning to database records
• Database: The Copernican Computer Revolution
• Data storage on magnetic tape
• Data storage on magnetic disk
• Database management: separating data from business rules
• Database As Organizational Memory
• The data model
• Definitions of database
• Designing Great Databases: Central Principles for Changing Businesses
• Benefits of storing data in one place
• Challenges of eliminating data redundancy
• Data models help companies anticipate challenges
• Integrated databases reverse old assumption
• The Impossible Dream: Dreaming It through the Years
• Travelling in Time: Database Past, Database Present, Database Future
• When a Sparrow Falls, Does the Chief  Executive Need to Know?
• Operational and Analytical Databases: Two Sides of a Coin
• The Relativistic Effects of Extended Time
• Not Dictatorship or Anarchy, but Federation
• Database: The Possible Dream
10. Database: The Technical Landscape
• Understanding Databases: If You Don't Have a Religion, Get One
• Database As Engine: Types of Databases
• Relationships: Hierarchical databases
• Database design: Data modeling
• Network databases
• The Programmer As Navigator
• The Programmer As Navigator, Part 2
• Relational Databases: Everything You've Wanted to Know (And Were Afraid to Ask)
• SQL: Lingua franca for people, or for computers?
• Relational databases: What makes them relational?
• Relational theory and relationships: Are they trained
• Bachman Was Right: We Are Navigators of Data
• The Database Future
• Part III: Designing and Building Client/Server Systems
11. A Conceptual Framework for the Future
• Physical Design vs. Logical Design
• Application architecture
• Questioning mainframes
• What Does a Mainframe Do For the Business?
• Mainframes and Business Services, Business Automation
• Business Rules, Business Services, Business Automation
• Data security
• Data consistency
• Are We There Yet?
• Physical and Logical Architectures
12. Application Architecture: A Better Way of Designing Applications
• The Problem of Sale
• What is a "big" system?
• Dividing and conquering big application development projects
• Abstraction and Encapsulation: Two Mechanisms for Turning Big into Small
• What is an abstraction?
• Abstraction hides unneeded detail
• Elements of abstraction
• The Three-Layer Application Architecture: Increasing Levels of Abstraction
• Benefits of abstraction in the three-layer application architecture
• Examples of abstraction in a big application
• Database management layer: File clerks
• Business rule processes: Middle managers
• The desktop application: Senior managers
• Interfaces: The Glue
• Types of interfaces in the three-layer application
• Communication within each layer
• The Design of Each Layer in the Application Architecture
• Independence: A trilateral agreement between the three layers in the application architecture
• Making the database management layer independent
• Making the business process rules layer independent
• Making the desktop application layer independent
• Application Architecture: Are the Application Really Better?
13. Designing Distributed Systems: Processes versus Databases
• Business Servers: What Do They Do?
• How Are Distributed Databases (and Applications) Developed?
• The Role of Methodology
• Information Engineering
• Death by Data Modeling
• You Can't Be Serious…
• Task Orientation Strikes Again: The World is Connected After All
• The Design Crisis: Senior Management Revolts
• Copernicus All Over Again: A New World Order
• Distributed Data — At Last
• Distribute the Processing: The Data Will Follow
• Doesn't This Require A Whole New Methodology?
14. A Client/Server Methodology
• Is There a Method(ology) to This Madness?
• Discipline Creates Freedom
• What's Broken, and What Needs to Be Fixed?
• A Model for Modeling
• Getting Physical
• Divide and Conquer
• Jack of All Trades, Master of Any?
• Next Year's Models
• Objects: An Objective View
• The Medium Is the Message
• An Object by Any Other Name: Is It Still an Object?
• What Objects Are Not
• Objects are Processes: Process Are Objects
• A Means to an End, or an End to a Means?
• Putting It All Together: A New Framework
• The Models Themselves
• Organizing For Success
• Application, Applet, Object, Small Team
• Architecture and Tools Teams
• User Interface Design
• Hire the Best
• Find Great People; Keep Great People
• Graphical Client/Server Design: A Process-Oriented Approach
15. Tools: Implements for Building Systems
• Mapping the Model onto the Tools
• Model-Driven Application Development
• Models, Diagrams, and CASE Tools: Art, Science, or Discipline?
• CAD, CAM, and CASE
• If it Walks Like a Duck and Looks Like a Duck…
• Is the Emperor Wearing Clothes?
• The Power of Diagrams
• CASE: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
• Learning from the Past
• Visual Design vs. Full CASE
• Can the Tools Do the Job?
• The Development Environment
• High-Level or Low-Level — Which Generation Are You From?
• Programming Languages
• Languages for the Thousands
• Programming for Nonprogrammers
• Where is Esperanto?
• What You Can Say is What You Can Think
• For Every Purpose There is a Language
• Desktop Languages
• Business Rule Languages
• Database Languages
• Graphical Development Environments: Tying the Pieces Together
• Event-Driven Programming: Another Copernican Revolution
• Is the Desktop All There Is?
• Visual Design: Yes; CASE: No!
• To Dream the Impossible Dream
• Programming Without Programming: The Fourth Generation
• Macro Power
• The Changing Nature of the Application
• Will it Run?
16. What Distributed Systems Are Made Of
• Refining the Application Architecture
• Desktop Navigation and Control
• Desktop Integration: OLE
• Compound document architecture
• Don't be a couch potato
• Body and soul: embedding objects, not bitmaps
• United we stand
• Living documents
• In the Database
• Navigation and control
• Integration and distributed databases
• Business Rules
• Integration
• Navigation and control: managing business processes
• Putting It All Together: Can Distributed Systems Be Built?
• May You Live in Interesting Times
• Part IV: Conclusion: The Global Village
17. Out of the Office and into the Home
• Telephones: Can They be Cost Justified?
• The Home Server
• The More Things Change, the More They Don't Stay the Same
• A Server in Every Office
• Connections: It's Not What You Know But Who You Know
• Have My Server Call Your Server
• The Global Village

This is a must read for any prospective CIO. Still extremely valid, this book ages well. Don't miss it.