Object-oriented system, method and article of manufacture for migrating a client-server application (#5)

Abstract

An interprise computing manager in which an application is composed of a client (front end) program which communicates utilizing a network with a server (back end) program. The client and server programs are loosely coupled and exchange information using the network. The client program is composed of a User Interface (UI) and an object-oriented framework (Presentation Engine (PE) framework). The UI exchanges data messages with the framework. The framework is designed to handle two types of messages: (1) from the UI, and (2) from the server (back end) program via the network. The framework includes a component, the mediator which manages messages coming into and going out of the framework. A distributed computer system is presented with software for a client computer, a server computer and a network for connecting the client computer to the server computer which utilizes an execution framework code segment configured to couple the server computer and the client computer via the network. A plurality of client computer code segments are stored on the server. Each client code segment is designed for transmission over the network to a client computer to initiate coupling. A plurality of server computer code segments are also stored on the server. A particular client code segment is selected, installed and executed in response to initiation of coupling via the network with a particular client utilizing the transmitted client computer code segment for communicating via a particular communication protocol to a corresponding server code segment on the server computer. Finally, a framework for migrating existing applications into the execution framework is integrated into the client-server architecture.