In this chapter, we started the discussion with a two-tier client-server pattern. This is one of the earliest and oldest client-server patterns. With the growth of the information technology industry, this two-tier client server pattern was not sufficient to meet the infrastructure requirements. This led to the evolution of the three-tier client-server pattern followed by n-tier client-server pattern. Some other variants of the client-server pattern like the master-slave pattern, peer-to-peer pattern, and so on were also discussed in this chapter. The applications and the design considerations for each type of pattern was also discussed in this chapter.
Web application development, which caught steam later could not use client-server architecture because of its inherent limitations. This led to the evolution of some patterns that were custom-made for the development of...