What about my client/server applications?

Dr. GUI knows of a number of ways to do client/server applications over the Internet today and of more great ways coming up.

If your needs (and your UI) are simple, Dr. GUI prescribes an HTML form on the client end along with some server extensions on the server end. If you write to the standards, your application will be able to run on any client that supports forms. Although the client end will be simple, you can do any sophisticated processing you need on the server end to return the result you need.

If you've been to medical school, you might want to write programs for the client and server ends that communicate with each other using your own communications protocol based on TCP/IP sockets. (You might be able to work within HTTP to do what you need, but it's tricky.) If you didn't finish med school, there are a number of companies that provide libraries for custom protocols that are callable from Visual C++, Visual Basic, and so forth. Or you could use distributed COM when it becomes available—the demo of Scribble running over the net that Dr. GUI saw at the Professional Developers Conference was quite cool.

Don't despair about the current state of client/server applications, though. As more ActiveX controls are available, client/server applications will become easier because the communications will be encapsulated into a control.