Flexible Thin Client Architectures: An XML-based Approach

摘要

Thin client applications for the World Wide Web are subject to special infrastructural restrictions such as network bandwidth and network latency. These restrictions have to be considered during thin client application development. HTML-based applications take these restrictions into account but they are limited in user interface design facilities. In this paper we focus on a flexible architecture for distributed thin client applications using an XML-based approach. We describe the architecture of the distributed thin client application and demonstrate how XML can be applied to support platform independent means of describing user interfaces and transmitting data over the Internet. Based on prototypes, we present different techniques and concepts to realize the described architecture and discuss the advantages and shortcomings of the presented approach.