BSCS 6th Web Design and Development

By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

Internet
Internet is defined as an Information super Highway, to access information over the web. However,
It can be defined in many ways as follows:
 Internet is a world-wide global system of interconnected computer networks.
 Internet uses the standard Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
 Every computer in internet is identified by a unique IP address.
 IP Address is a unique set of numbers (such as 110.22.33.114) which identifies a computer
location.
 A special computer DNS (Domain Name Server) is used to give name to the IP Address so
that user can locate a computer by a name.
 For example, a DNS server will resolve a name http://www.google.com to a particular IP
address to uniquely identify the computer on which this website is hosted.
 Internet is accessible to every user all over the world.

Evolution
The concept of Internet was originated in 1969 and has undergone several technological &
Infrastructural changes as discussed below:

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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

 The origin of Internet devised from the concept of Advanced Research Project Agency
Network (ARPANET).
 ARPANET was developed by United States Department of Defense.
 Basic purpose of ARPANET was to provide communication among the various bodies of
government.
 Initially, there were only four nodes, formally called Hosts.
 In 1972, the ARPANET spread over the globe with 23 nodes located at different countries
and thus became known as Internet.
 By the time, with invention of new technologies such as TCP/IP protocols, DNS, WWW,
browsers, scripting languages etc.,Internet provided a medium to publish and access
information over the web.

Advantages
Internet covers almost every aspect of life; one can think of. Here, we will discuss some of the
advantages of Internet:

 Internet allows us to communicate with the people sitting at remote locations. There are
various apps available on the wed that uses Internet as a medium for communication. One
can find various social networking sites such as:
o Facebook
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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

o Twitter
o Yahoo
o Google+
o Flickr
o Orkut
 One can surf for any kind of information over the internet. Information regarding various
topics such as Technology, Health & Science, Social Studies, Geographical Information,
Information Technology, Products etc can be surfed with help of a search engine.
 Apart from communication and source of information, internet also serves a medium for
entertainment. Following are the various modes for entertainment over internet.
o Online Television
o Online Games
o Songs
o Videos
o Social Networking Apps
 Internet allows us to use many services like:
o Internet Banking
o Matrimonial Services
o Online Shopping
o Online Ticket Booking
o Online Bill Payment
o Data Sharing
o E-mail
 Internet provides concept of electronic commerce, that allows the business deals to be
conducted on electronic systems

Disadvantages
However, Internet has proved to be a powerful source of information in almost every field, yet there
exists many disadvantages discussed below:

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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

 There are always chances to loose personal information such as name, address, credit card
number. Therefore, one should be very careful while sharing such information. One should
use credit cards only through authenticated sites.
 Another disadvantage is the Spamming. Spamming corresponds to the unwanted e-mails in
bulk. These e-mails serve no purpose and lead to obstruction of entire system.
 Virus can easily be spread to the computers connected to internet. Such virus attacks may
cause your system to crash or your important data may get deleted.
 Also a biggest threat on internet is pornography. There are many pornographic sites that can
be found, letting your children to use internet which indirectly affects the children healthy
mental life.
 There are various websites that do not provide the authenticated information. This leads to
misconception among many people.

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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

Introduction to World Wide Web

WWW stands for World Wide Web. A technical definition of the World Wide Web is : all the
resources and users on the Internet that are using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
A broader definition comes from the organization that Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee helped
found, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human
knowledge.
In simple terms, The World Wide Web is a way of exchanging information between computers on
the Internet, tying them together into a vast collection of interactive multimedia resources.

Internet and Web is not the same thing: Web uses internet to pass over the information.

Evolution
World Wide Web was created by Timothy Berners Lee in 1989 at CERN in Geneva. World
Wide Web came into existence as a proposal by him, to allow researchers to work together
effectively and efficiently at CERN. Eventually it became World Wide Web.
The following diagram briefly defines evolution of World Wide Web:

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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

WWW Operation
WWW works on client- server approach. Following steps explains how the web works:
1. User enters the URL (say, http://www.youtube.com) of the web page in the address bar of
web browser.
2. Then browser requests the Domain Name Server for the IP address corresponding to
www.tutorialspoint.com.
3. After receiving IP address, browser sends the request for web page to the web server using
HTTP protocol which specifies the way the browser and web server communicates.
4. Then web server receives request using HTTP protocol and checks its search for the requested
web page. If found it returns it back to the web browser and close the HTTP connection.

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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

5. Now the web browser receives the web page, It interprets it and display the contents of web
page in web browser’s window.

Web Architecture
Web architecture is the conceptual structure of the World Wide Web. The WWW or internet is a
constantly changing medium that enables communication between different users and the
technical interaction (interoperability) between different systems and subsystems. The basis for
this is different components and data formats, which are usually arranged in tiers and build on
each other.
Overall, they form the infrastructure of the internet, which is made possible by the three core
components of data transmission protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS), representation formats
(HTML, CSS, XML), and addressing standards (URI, URL). The term web architecture should
be distinguished from the terms website architecture and information architecture.

Origin of web architecture

The world wide web is a concept that was realized in the 1990s so that people and machines could
communicate with each other within a certain space. It is used to exchange, distribute, and share
information in a network. At that time, the web consisted predominantly of static websites based
on HTML, in other words, hypertexts that can be retrieved by a browser. Dynamic websites and
distributed web services were added later.

Types of web architecture

The internet is a medium that is constantly changing and expanded by numerous developers,
programmers and various consortia such as the W3C. However, the architectures used can be
schematically distinguished.

1. Client-server architecture
Initially, the web consisted of a two-tiered architecture: clients and servers. Clients and servers
shared the tasks and services that the system was supposed to perform. For example, the client may
request a service from the server; the server answers the request by providing the service. Retrieving
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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

a website using a URL address that directs to a server to load the site in the client’s browser is an
example of the two-layer model, also known as the client-server model.
The internet protocol family, which now consists of around 500 different network protocols, is
usually used as the basis for the WWW, but it usually comprises the TCP/TCP/IP reference model.
Three prerequisites must exist in the web architecture for the distributed application systems to
communicate with one another:

 Representation formats with a fixed standard: The most frequently used formats are HTML and CSS;
or XML when machines communicate with one another.
 Protocols for data transfer: HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) or HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer
Protocol Secure) is used in the web. Other applications, such as mail servers, use SMTP (Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol) or POP (Post Office Protocol). Determining the protocols used depends on the
application.
 The standard for addressing: This refers to the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) which is an instance
of the more general concept of URI.

Finally, the web architecture is analogous to the operational structure of application systems for data
storage, data transmission, and presentation. When transferred to the web, the web architecture
typically consists of database servers that manage the data and resources. They communicate with a
client using a transfer protocol that can retrieve the data and view it in a browser. The representation
is usually done with HTML and CSS.
EXAMPLE:

2. Three-tier model
Three-tier models include an application logic between the client and the server, which handles the
data processing and allows a certain degree of interaction. For example, an application server can
process data while a database server is dedicated solely to data storage. In this way, content can be
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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

dynamically loaded and saved. The script language JavaScript is often responsible for the behavior
of the client.
Generally, a distinction is made between server-side and client-side data processing. Dynamic
websites are characterized by the fact that content is changed on the client side without new
communication between server and client being required. Action on the client side is influenced by
scripts so that no asynchronous data transfer is necessary. On the server side, modified content is
stored via the application server on the database server. Optionally, this can be a virtual server that
emulates a physical one.
There are different programming languages and frameworks to implement three-tier models. A
selection:
 Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)
 Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
 JavaServer Pages (JSP)
 Active Server Pages (ASP.NET)
 Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)
 Microsoft Silverlight
 JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
 Java applets, JavaScript and VBScript (client-side technologies)

3. Service-oriented architectures (SOA)

Today the web is used for the networking of globally distributed IT structures. Each IT system can,
in turn, consist of subsections whose individual components are linked to one another via a fixed
structure or architecture. Think intranet and internal enterprise software. Modern IT and web
applications are much more complex than the client-server model. Distributed web services, which
are set up as service-oriented architectures (SOA), offer many functions and modular functional units,
which can be supplemented. With SOAs, business processes can be automated by the involved
systems communicating with one another - partly without human intervention - and performing
certain tasks. Examples include online banking, e-commerce, e-learning, online marketplaces, and
business intelligence applications. These architectures are not only much more complex but can also
be modularly extended. They are known as N-tier architectures and have so far been used primarily
in the business sector.
There are generally two approaches:

 Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP): WSDL
is a meta-language for describing network services based on XML, enabling a web service to interpret
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 BSCS 6th Web Design and Development
By Iqra Rehman
MS cs

and execute specific tasks. An interface to a web service can be defined with WSDL. SOAP is also
based on XML and allows the control of web services in the form of procedure calls, which are
realized with the protocol RPC (remote procedure call). SOAP, WSDL, and XML Schema are often
used together.
 Representational State Transfer (REST): REST is a similar approach used to communicate between
machines in distributed systems. It is based on a client-server architecture, but is characterized above
all by its uniform interface making REST easy to use with different resources or objects. With the
Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS) concept, it is also possible to change
interfaces during operation, instead of having to redefine them as is the case with WSDL.

The Internet of Things or Semantic Web can be considered a current research area in this context. If
the Web architecture was represented as an evolutionary timeline, IoT and Semantic Web would be
the top of the development. The architectures that are used there are correspondingly complex.

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