Prior to the popularity of the web, client/server applications often involved the creation of native applications which were deployed to clients. In this model, developers had a great deal of freedom in determining which parts of the entire client/server application would be in the client and which in the server. Consequently, very mature models for client/server development emerged, and often well designed optimal distribution of processing and logic could be achieved. When the web took off, the client was no longer a viable application platform, it was really more of a document viewer. Consequently the user interface logic existed almost entirely on the server. However, the web has matured substantially and has proven itself to be a reasonable application platform. We can once again start utilizing more efficient and well-structured client/server model design. There are certainly still technical issues, but we are in a position to better to build true client/server applications now.

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