Thin Vs Fat

[amol deshpande]

Hi,

What is the context in which Thin and Fat clients are discussed? What do they imply.....If anybody can explain with J2ee examples it would be nice!!!

Why are those called so!

Amol

[Theodore Casser]

The two are largely discussed in context of which places more of a burden on which portion of an application's structure - fat clients on the client machine, thin clients on the network and server. Just the difference between two different ways of architecting and implementing a client-server application.

[Peer Reynders]

In addition to the points that Theodore already mentioned:

Thin clients (usually web browsers) are usually used where it is essential that there is "zero deployment effort" for the users and that services are centralized to make maintenance and updates simpler. The drawback is that you are usually stuck with some fairly basic GUI capabilities - basically what browser can do with HTML (Servlets, JSP, etc.).

If the requirements make it clear that a "basic" GUI isn't sufficient and that the (power) users require a rich and more expressive GUI, you have to move to a thick (or rich) client (using Swing or even SWT). Sun's "Web Start" is a technology that attempts to minimize the deployment effort/impact for rich clients, so that you can use rich clients in situations that in the past were only serviced by thin clients.
[ October 06, 2005: Message edited by: Peer Reynders ]

[Theodore Casser]

Originally posted by Peer Reynders:
BTW Theodore: shouldn't that be SCJP 5
Or is that some kind of contraction of SCJP 1.2 and SCJP 5.0?

With all the renaming they're doing lately with the versions, I had to go check the certification site myself, so no worries on the confusion. Their site still says '5.0', so I'm using that until I hear otherwise (or get home to check the certificate).

[Theodore Casser]

Originally posted by Peer Reynders:
Actually it was the "SCPJ2 5.0" vs "SCJP 5.0" I was talking about.
The transposed "J" and "P" and the additional "2".

Ah. Dunno -I've just had it that way for a long time. Point taken, though.