Types of Clients

Programmers have the facility to allow three different kinds of clients to connect to a JADE system. These three types of clients are named:
• JADE Forms
• HTML Documents
• Web Services


In the same schema, a JADE developer can create many completely separate applications which may provide different interfaces to access the same database. JADE Forms applications are made up of forms, as the name suggests. Clients need to connect through the JADE Smart Thin Client or Standard Client to be able to run applications that use JADE Forms. The Smart Thin Client works by connecting to an Application Server which generally does all the processing on behalf of the Smart Thin Client, meaning the thin client only needs to be responsible for displaying forms and taking input. This means the computer running the thin client does not have to be a very powerful computer, and it does not require a fast network connection as it is not loading data from the database — JADE thin clients are often run over a dial-up connection.


This is the reason they are called thin clients, as there is not a heavy requirement on computational power to run these clients. The Standard Client is just the Smart Thin Client combined with the Application Server on one machine. In this case, the node running the client does all of the processing as well as the presentation. Standard clients have greater demands on computational power than thin clients, as they must load data from the database as well as do their own processing. The advantages of using JADE Forms include:


• Out of the three kinds of clients, JADE Forms provide the shortest development time of JADE applications.
• Allows developers to use the same technology end-to-end.
• Smart thin clients can be packaged up so they can be installed and run on client computers in several clicks.