Lesson 1: Introduction to Internet Applications

1.1 Definition 1
1.2 Technologies 1
1.3 The client server Architecture 2
1.4 Terms used to relation to Internet applications 3
1.5 Exercise 1 6

1.1 Definition
o Internet applications are online applications that users can access via web
browsers. They are also referred to as web applications.
o They are distinct from web sites that only serve static content.
o They operate in background when you carry out activities that require
processing of some data. For instance:
1. When you fill out an online registration form (writing your
registration information to a database)
2. When you make an online purchase (validating your credit card,
logging the transaction)
3. When you request a stock chart for a given time range
(dynamically generating the image)

1.2 Technologies
o Internet applications use enabling technologies such as HTML, JavaScript,
VBScript, Applets, perl, Flash, CGI, PHP, ASP, or Java servlets to create
dynamic content. These technologies can be grouped into client and server
side technologies as follows:
o Client- HTML, JavaScript, VBScript, Applets, Flash
o Server- Perl, PHP, Servlets
o HTML
o Acronym for HyperText Markup Language.
o It combines text and extra information about the text.
o The extra information is about the text's structure or presentation
and is expressed using markup, which is intermingled with the
primary text.
o Perl
o Named after the parable of the perl
o Practical Extraction and Report Language is a backronym.
o Its highly portable
o Has direct access to O/S functions
o Has powerful string pattern-matching
o Can be used for database access

o JavaScript

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 o Client-based scripting language
o Its different from java
o Enables dynamic content through element modification

o Applets
o Used to develop Client-side Java programs
o Enables computation in browser
o Applets have inbuilt security to ensure they do not access files in
the client.
o They require longer time to load as compared to scripting
languages.
o Servlets
o Server-side Java
o Alternative to CGI
▪ Better performance
▪ Familiar to Java programmers
▪ Access to rich set of classes

1.3 The client server Architecture

o Internet applications technology is implemented within a client server
architecture that has three fundamental components:
o Web (client) browsers
o Network
o Web servers
o The diagram shown below represents the architecture:

Internet applications therefore work as follows:

o When the web server gets a CGI request, it executes the application in
a separate process
o The server passes the parameters received with the request (if any) to
the application and collects its output

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 o This output is then returned to the client just as if it had been fetched
from a static document

1.4 Terms used to relation to Internet applications

o Internet
o It is a global network of networks through which computers
communicate
o It was envisioned by its inventors to serve as
▪ World-wide broadcasting medium
▪ Mechanism for information dissemination
▪ Medium for global collaboration
o History of the Internet

Reading Assignment:

o Read and write short notes on the history of the Internet.

o The World Wide Web
o The World Wide Web ("WWW" or simply the "Web") is a system
of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet.
With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain
text, images, and other multimedia and navigates between them
using hyperlinks.
o The Web was created around 1990 by the Englishman Tim
Berners-Lee working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
o Hosts
o A host is a computing device connected to the Internet (PC,
Internet appliance, mobile phone)
o It sends and receives packets
o Every host constantly monitors the network for packets
o Internet Protocol (IP)

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 o It’s a protocol (a set of conventions) that governs how packets are
sent across the Internet
o A mechanism for transmitting packets between source and
destination
o IP Addresses
o It is a unique address assigned to each host
o It is 4 bytes long or 32 bits long
o It is assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
o It is Usually presented in dotted decimal notation
o Example: 134.117.5.8
o Domain Names
o The dotted decimal notation is not very memorable
o On top, IP address often change for any number of reasons, and
should not be hard coded
o Symbolic names provide an alternative way of naming hosts
o Example www.scs.carleton.ca
o Our concern is how do to resolve a domain name to its IP address.
The solution of which is provided by the Domain Name Server
(DNS)
o Domain Name Server (DNS)
o A DNS is a federated database
o Each domain and each of the sub domains in a domain has a
unique name
o Example of DNS structure

o Ports
o Every host has multiple ports (ako mailboxes) on which it can
receive packets
o Certain ports (0-1024) are reserved for standard services
o Reserved Ports
o 20: File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
o 22: Secure Shell (SSH)

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 o 23: Telnet
o 25: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
o 80: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
o Resources
o Anything accessible via the Web is referred to as a resource
▪ HTML documents
▪ Images
o Static resources don't change from request to request, such as an
HTML document or an image
o Dynamic resources may vary with each request, depending on a
number of conditions
▪ Changing data source
▪ User identity
▪ Input from the user passed with the request
▪ Time of day
o Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
o They define a standard way to locate resources on the Web
o Web equivalent for specifying a name in a file system
o An URL identifies the protocol (or scheme), host, optional port
number, and document path.
▪ Common protocols include: http, https, ftp, and file
▪ Host identifies the machine running the web server
▪ Host and port number are separated by a colon (80 is used
as default for http URLs)
▪ Path is the location of the resource requested
▪ Cannot contain spaces, &, :, ; characters
o Example:

o HTTP
o HyperText Transfer Protocol
o Implements a request-response model
o Connectionless (at least, before the current version, HTTP/1.1)
o As soon as a request is processed, the connection between client
and server is terminated.
o Defines format for requests and responses
o MIME
o Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
o A specification for formatting non-text messages (graphics, audio,
and video files) so they can be sent over the Internet
o Originally developed for formatting e-mail messages

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1.5 Exercise 1
1. Explain the following terms:
a. Internet applications
b. Internet
c. World wide web
2. Using examples differentiate between the following Internet technologies.
a. Applets and servlets
b. HTML and JavaScript
3. Using a diagram, explain the client server architecture as used in Internet
applications.
4. Describe the following terms as used in Internet technologies
a. Host
b. Port
c. Domain Name Server [DNS]
d. URLs