What is a SimpleServer?

[Wolfgang Orth]

What is a SimpleServer?

Well, what a strange question, isn't it?

Recently I talked with colleagues about writing webserver and webclients. It was easy to agree on what was meant with webserver and webclient.

During the discussion we compared several concepts of communication between the components, and then I menationed Nettalks Simpleserver. Actually I did not named them SIMPLEserver. I described them as being non-webserver. The difference between web/simpleserver/clients - as far as I am aware of - is that these "simple" ones do not send prefixed HTTP-header and also keep up the connection until the connection is closed or the defined timeout occured.

Also an important difference: clients can send stings, messages, commands, whatever without requesting anything. (as I saif before: as far as I am aware, but I would not wonder if I missed out something {possibly even more important} else)

Now to my concern: how should I name this kind of non-webserver, so that others, who are not familiar with Nettalk or non-webserver programming?

Thanks for suggestions :-D

bye
Wolfgang

[Bruce]

One term for it is a "telnet" session. although Tenet implies there is a "shell" at the server end - ie you can actually do stuff. In this case the "shell" though is your server side.

Another phrase is a "socket connection". Meaning that the two machines are connected using a "socket". (you can send, and receive basically anything you like.)

Another thing people might be familiar with is a "terminal". ie the client side is acting as a terminal to the server side. Again this sort of implies a shell (say like a DOS command prompt) but obviously in this case you're limited to whatever commands you have implemented on the server side.

Cheers
Bruce

[Wolfgang Orth]

Thanks for your comprehensive reply, Bruce!

I will call it a Socket-Server then.