Integrated Curriculum of Multi-tier Client/Server Web-Based



Abstract—The Multi-tier Client/Server model is standard

and popular for modern computer software systems. For better

performance, database servers and web (or application) servers

usually run on different machines. The end-user can only access

data through the application server, and cannot access the

database directly. These servers are often distributed at

different locations connected through the network. Web-based

architecture is the most essential design for Internet

applications. It is very important to teach students the

browser-based client/server model in college. Several courses,

such as Web Programming, Networking, Operating Systems

and Database, cover the related topics, but the curriculum

mostly focuses on the individual components. Students seldom

have a chance to connect the knowledge from these topics

together in a single course. In this paper, an integrated

hands-on curriculum is proposed for students to learn the

related topics in a systematic method that links these subjects

together. Several project topics are also suggested. It is

important not only to know these subjects but also to have

better learning outcomes by working on projects that integrate

these subjects.

Index Terms—Client/server, curriculum, multi-tier,

web-based.

I. INTRODUCTION

Distributing

service functions on different machines from

the user computers is the basic concept of client/server

architecture. The client/server architecture is based on the

process, program, or software, not on the hardware machine.

Beginners are often confused and mix program processes

with hardware machines. Clients and servers communicate

with each other through the same protocol that could either

be on the same machine or on different machines through

network.

The key concept of client/server architecture is that the

client makes the request and initiates the connection. The

server responds and provides the service. The client and

server could either be always connected or connectionless,

which does not require a session connection between sender

and receiver. If the client and server are on two different

machines, it is called 2-tier architecture. If 3 machines are

involved in the client/server architecture, it is a 3-tier system

and one of the machine might be the client and server at the

same time. If there are N machines involved, it is called an

N-tier client/server.

The World Wide Web (WWW) can connect a web server

(or application server) with many clients (browsers) using

Manuscript received December 12, 2018; revised March 12, 2019.

The author is with School of Computer Science, Kean University, Union,

New Jersey, USA (e-mail: [email protected]).

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) through the network.

The e-commerce business is based on the WWW and people

use browsers on their laptops to access different kinds of

servers every day. For example, we can use a browser to read

email, whose contents are stored on Google’s Gmail server.

An online store such as Amazon allows people to use the

browser to place orders where the product, vendor and

ordering information are kept on Amazon’s servers.

Although the servers can be run on the same machine,

industrials usually try to have dedicated machines for

providing the important services. For example, the web

server and Database Management System (DBMS) are

usually not running on the same machine. This is to avoid

different servers competing for the same resources (CPU,

memory and hard drive) and affect the processing and

responding performance. Since the DBMS manages the

centralized data, many organizations put the database server

inside their firewalls for security reasons and restrict the

access to their DBMS only through dedicated applications

that can be accessed by the public people.

In the 3-tier client/server architecture as shown in Fig. 1,

the PHP programs running the web server could be a client

and a server at the same time. It plays as a server to take the

requests from the browsers, process and responds with

information to the browsers. It also plays as a client and sends

the query requests to the DBMS and receives the results back.

Fig. 1. 3-tier client/server architecture.

The client/server model is very important to e-commerce,

which has a strong impact on people’s daily life and the

market will keep growing. It is predicted that the amount of

online retail sales will reach 638 Billion in 2022 [1]. Many

applications can automatically send emails with customized

information to users and the user can click the links to

directly respond back to the applications with individual

information. More and more businesses focus on web-based

applications that can interact with users by analyzing their

personalized data through the multi-tier client/server systems.

This paper will focus on how to teach web-based

client/server curriculum so students can quickly enter these

fields.

II. STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES (SLO)

The goals of this proposed curriculum are for students to

Integrated Curriculum of Multi-tier Client/Server

Web-Based Database Applications

Ching-Yu Huang

International Journal of Information and Education Technology, Vol. 9, No. 5, May 2019

318

doi: 10.18178/ijiet.2019.9.5.1220

learn the fundamental client/server concepts using a

web-based 3 tier architecture, do hands-on exercises on the

web server and database server, and design a web-based

application that will take inputs from the browser, pass the

data from the browser to the programs running on the web

server and process the data, send SQL query to the database

and receive the results returned from database. Since this is a

hands-on course, in addition to these goals, students should

learn how to design web pages, write programs to handle the

browser request, send queries and receive the results. It will

be very helpful to teach students how to configure the web

server and database server.

After the completion of this curriculum, students should be

able to do the followings:

1) Demonstrate an understanding of the web-based database

applications and the 3-tier client-server systems and

architecture

2) Design and develop interactive client-side web pages that

can take user input in different formats and validate the

inputs.

3) Design and develop server-side applications run on the

web server to communicate with the web pages, and

interact with the web server.

4) Design and develop server-side applications run on the

web server to access data from database, process the

returned results from the database.

5) Integrate the 3-tier web database applications that have

interactive front-end web pages using Ajax to work with

the back-end programs that can process the data received

from the web pages, communicate with the database with

input data and returned results, interact with the

Operating System on the web server, display updatable

results on the browser and save the updated results back

to the database.

III. COURSE PREPARATION

It is not realistic asking each student to own several

different computers to run several different servers.

Therefore, the free open source XAMPP [2], [3] software

package is adopted in this paper for the demo and exercises.

The main user interface is shown in Fig. 2. It stands for

Cross-Platform (X), Apache (A), MariaDB (M), PHP (P) and

Perl (P). The package includes an Apache web server and

MariaDB [4], a community-developed fork of the MySQL

relational DBMS. The package can be installed on Apple

OS-X, MS-Windows, and Linux systems and it doesn’t

require powerful hardware. In this paper, the browser (1

tier), Apache web server (2

tier) and MariaDB database

server (3

tier) will be used to simulate the 3-tier architecture,

even though they are all running on the same laptop.

The configurations of Apache and MySQL servers can be

changed by clicking on the “Config” buttons. /xampp/htdocs

is the default document root – a location to keep web pages

and files for the Apache web server can access. The default

MySQL database files is at /xampp/mysql.

Since the DBMS is the 3

tier in the proposed curriculum,

the basic Structure Query Language (SQL) – SELECT

statement will be covered. In order for a computer language

to communicate with the database, the language should

provide the database functions to connect to the DBMS, send

SQL queries, and receive the results back from the DBMS.

PHP has built-in MySQL functions [5] that can connect to

MariaDB and interact with the database. Students won’t need

to install any other libraries for working on client/server

projects. The Apache web server and MySQL database

server can be easily started and stopped by clicking on the

corresponding buttons shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The main graphic user interface of XAMPP.

The prerequisite for students to study this curriculum is to

have programming skills. Students should know the basic

variables, data types, assignments, variable scope, logic

comparison, if-else, loops, 1-D and 2-D arrays, and methods

(functions). PHP and Perl are server-side scripting languages

and the package provides a terminal for running the scripting

programs as shown in Fig. 3. In this paper, PHP will be the

computer language for the demo and exercises.

Fig. 3. The shell terminal of XAMPP.

Fig. 4. The Sublime text editor shows the client source code running on the

browser - a HTML program login.html.

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Fig. 5. The web page of the HTML code in Fig. 4.

Fig. 6. The Sublime text editor shows the source code running on the web

server - a PHP program login.php at the 2nd tab.

Fig. 7. The result shows on the browser is generated by the PHP program

after the Submit button is clicked.

A good editor is very helpful for the programming and

debugging. Sublime Text [6] is a free proprietary

cross-platform source code editor supporting many

programming languages included the HTML. It shows the

line numbers, keywords and user defined variables in

different colors. HTML source code for a simple login web

page is shown in Fig. 4, and the corresponding web page is

shown in Fig. 5. The login.php program shown in Fig. 6 will

be called when the “Submit” is clicked and the PHP program

will display the result on the browser as shown in Fig. 7. In

this paper, all the example source codes are displayed in

Sublime Text.

IV. CURRICULUM

The proposed curriculum is based on 16 weeks of classes

with 2.5 hours per week. The total number of hours is 40,

including 35 hours of lecture and 5 hours of exams and

reviewing answers. Students should also spend 80-120 hours

outside the classes on studying and completing homework

and project assignments. There are 5 major components that

should be covered – fundamentals of client/server, client-side

web design and programming, server-side application

programming, server-side database programming and

integration between these components. These topics should

be taught in sequence.

A. Fundamentals of Client/Server

The definition of client and server should be covered. This

component should have 2 lecture classes, totaling around 5

hours. Several real-world examples should be given to

demonstrate client/server concepts such as Google shared

drive, product searching in Amazon, Weather Channel, etc.

The following sub-topics should be discussed when

demonstrating the examples:

 Client/server, process, protocol, daemon, and 3-tier

architecture concepts

 How to identify who is the client or server

 Install XAMPP, Sublime Text, Chrome browser

 Identify the input/output and resources (memory, CPU

and storage) used by the client/server system.

 What functions/services does the server do/provide?

 What is dynamic web page? Who provides the updated

content on the web pages?

 Internet Protocol (IP) address, and how to show the IP

address of students’ own laptops using “ifconfig -a”

command on Linux and Mac terminal or “ipconfig/all”

command on MS-Windows command prompt window

(cmd).

 Examine the processes running on the systems and

meaning of each information – user id, process id,

running time, command, etc. “tasklist” command on

MS-Windows and “ps -ef” command on Mac and Linux

systems.

 Exam and set the file permission mode – owner, group,

public and the read, write, execute mode.

B. Client-Side Web Design and Programming

The client-side programming can be easily demonstrated

by using HTML to design web pages. This component should

have 3 classes, totaling 7.5 hours of lecture. Students should

do hands-on HTML and JavaScript [7], [8] coding, such as

making the login web page as shown in Fig. 4. The following

topics should be covered:

 Concepts and structure of HTML Document Object

Model (DOM).

 Basic HTML tags and related attributes – <FONT>, <A

HREF>, <SELECT>, <INPUT>, <BR>, <TITLE>,

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<IMG>, <UL>, <TABLE>, <TR>, <TD>, <DIV>,

<FORM>

 HTML <INPUT> tag and attributes in array style.

 Common Gateway Interface (CGI) – POST, GET methods.

 Define the server-side PHP program in HTML <FORM>

and the PHP program location.

 Basic JavaScript – variables, array, function, mouse

events and handlings, getElementById, time and utility

functions

 JavaScript debugging using browser tools (e.g. Chrome

console)

 Data validation (type, empty and range) on the client-side

(front-end)

 Utilizing 3

party JavaScript libraries or APIs, such as

Google Maps and Google Charts.

Students should be able to design web pages that have

input boxes for login and password, check box, dropdown list,

etc different input formats as shown in Fig. 5.

This component works on the 1

tier client browser and the

tier web server. The server-side programming requires

students to have better coding skills than on the client-side

because it usually uses a host scripting language such as

Python, Perl or PHP. That is why students should be good at

programming prior taking the course. It is very important to

let students know the difference between client-side and

server-side programming, and which programs and machines

handle the events and the corresponding processes. This

component should have 3 classes with 7.5 hours of lecture.

The following topics should be covered:

 Receiving data from the browser using $_POST[] and

$_GET[] methods.

 Using PHP to receive multiple array values from the

<INPUT> array style.

 Receiving client information from the web server using

$_SERVER[], such as IP address, browser and OS type.

 Utilizing the client information to protect and improve the

security for the web server.

 Retrieving the date and time from the browser and the

web server. Set and convert the time zones.

 Permission mode of the PHP programs and folders.

 The default path and the system environment when the

programs run on the server.

 Opening files to read/write the files.

 Changing the permission mode and ownership of the

output files.

 Uploading files from HTML, identifying the file type,

and saving and moving the file into a specific folder on

the server.

 Running other programs on the server using exec_shell()

function.

 Passing messages or database results from the PHP

programs to the JavaScript on the HTML web pages.

 Identifying the causes of system error messages shown on

the browser when the PHP program is run the web.

 Debugging the PHP programs on the command line as

shown in Fig. 8.

 The basic concepts of Operating System (OS), web server,

and their relationship.

 Utilize the PHP sendmail() function to email users from

the PHP programs.

Fig. 8. It shows how to check the syntax of a PHP program and execute the

program using the Shell command line. A syntax error was caught and the

message is displayed on the command line.

D. Server-Side Database Programming

This component is the extension of server-side

programming by adding additional database components.

However, the PHP programs on the 2

tier web server is

considered as a client to the 3

tier database server. Students

should be able to send the SQL query request from the PHP

programs to MySQL database, receive and process the return

results. This component should have 3 classes with 7.5 hours

of lecture and cover the following topics:

 Static and dynamic web pages.

 Basic SQL DML – SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELTE

and WHERE clauses.

 Basic SQL joins with multiple tables.

 Basic SQL aggregate functions – count(), sum(), avg(),

max(), and min().

 PHP MySQL functions – mysqi_connect(), mysqli_close(),

mysqli_query(), mysqli_select_db(),

mysqli_fetch_array(),mysqli_num_rows()mysqli_free_re

sult(), mysqli_affected_rows(), and other related

functions.

 Displaying the database results in HTML <TABLE>,

<SELECT>, <INPUT> tags on the browser.

 Identifying the no results caused by empty result returned

from the database or SQL query error.

 Debugging the SQL query error – syntax, logic or others.

 Error handling and error message.

 Password encryption and comparison.

 Getting the new auto-increment id number using

mysqli_insert_id() when INSERT a new item.

 Since the SQL INSERT, DELETE and UPDATE will

return no results, how to identify each if they are

successfully executed.

E. Integration

The definition of client and server should be covered. This

component should have 3 classes with 7.5 hours of lecture.

 Authentication and authorization by comparing the login,

password received from the browser against the login and

encrypted password in the database.

 Asynchronous web applications using Ajax with callback

functions.

 Ajax jQuery

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C. Server-Side Application Programming

 Passing data from the browser to PHP using Ajax POST or

GET methods, and included the data as variables in the

SQL query.

 Using 3

party JavaScript library/package to display the

processed database results on the browser.

 Using database results to update a specific browser content

without reloading the whole web page.

 Setting and converting the time zone among the 3-tier

systems – the customer delivery address, vendors, and the

system web and database servers.

 Displaying the results from the database on the browser for

users to select or change the content and save the changes

back to the original records in the database.

 Understanding the data flow and client/server relationship

among the 1

tier, 2

tier and 3

tier.

 Identifying and utilizing the different time among the 3-tier

programs.

V. METHODS OF ASSESSMENTS

It is important to assess students’ studying, identify their

weak spots and adjust the teaching pace. The assessments

include 3 parts – written exams, homework, and projects. The

exams should be around 60% of total final points. Homework

and project assignments should be 20% each.

There should be two quizzes (10 points/each), one

midterm (25 points) and one final assignment (25 points)

with two phases, or two different smaller projects. Students

are expected to spend total 40 - 60 hours on studying. It is

very import that instructors review answers with students.

The exams should include the conceptual questions,

hands-on skills, analysis, design and development of the

projects.

B. Projects

There should be one project assignment with three phases,

or three different smaller projects. The projects should

involve with 3-tier design and development – an interactive

user interface and display on the front-end browser as the

-tier, 2

-tier programs run on the web server to receive

data from the browsers, process the data, interact with the

server, save data into the 3

-tier database, receive the data

from the database and display the processed results on the

browser. The total points for all the projects will be 30 points.

Students are expected to spend total 40 - 60 hours on the

projects. Here are some examples:

 Design and develop a mini-online store allows customers,

vendors to sign up, login, add products, place orders on

multiple products, and view the order history and sales

report. Students need to convert the time zones that could

be different among these entities.

 Design and develop a web password reset system that users

can sign up, login, and securely reset the encrypted

password on the database through the web browser. The

system should send email to users to reset the password and

confirm the password is changed. The activities should be

logged.

 Design and develop a web system that allows users to sign

up, login, enter the travel information (trip name, date,

multiple cities, states, countries, notes) on the browser and

save the data into the database. Then, users can select the

trip name to display the trip information and locations on

the Google Maps.

 Design and develop a web cybersecurity data visualization

system that allow users to upload secure or Apache log

files, process the files to extract the IP address, date and

time, and other data, and save the information into the

database. Then, users can select and visualize the data on

the browsers in Google Charts – Table, Line Chart, and Pie

Chart formats, and view the data on the Google Maps.

 Design and develop a web image management system that

allow users to upload images, save and move the image to

specific folders, shrink the images into thumbnail, and save

the image information (name, path, upload date, owner

name) into the database. Then, users can select and view

the image on the browser.

 Design and develop a web system that users can copy/paste

or upload a Java source code, save the code into a file,

compile and run the program. The system should show the

error message on the browser if there is any compile or run

time error. If there is no error, the system should show the

results of running the Java program on the browser.

 Design and develop a web system that can ping and detect

whether the given server names are alive or not, and

display the status in different colors [9] on the browser.

C. Extra Study

If students wish to do the project on a 2 or 3-tier

architecture on 2 different operating systems, they can

consider to use the virtual machine. Oracle Virtualbox [10] is

a virtual machine that can host different kinds of Operating

Systems, such as Ubuntu [11], which is a popular Linux

Operating System. A Shell prompt is shown in Fig. 9 with

Virtualbox version 5.2.18 and Ubuntu Linux server

18.04.1-live. The Linux system is a better Operating System

than MS-Windows for students to learn the server

environment in the following topics:

 Process status

 Scheduling – cron job

 Permission mode

 Context switch

 File systems

Fig. 9. The Ubuntu Linux system is installed on the Virturalbox. The $ is the

Linux command shell prompt.

Fig. 10. The Linux “top” command can show the process and system running

information.

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322

A. Exams

The top command provides more details about the process

statuses, process information, virtual memory, and other

system related information as shown in Fig. 10.

In the normal 3-tier architecture, the client and web server

should be on different operating systems and PHP programs

must be run by the web server. A tool is required to transfer

the files from the client to the server. FileZilla as shown in

Fig. 11 is convenient to transfer files between two operating

systems – the local system is the client and the virtual system

is the server.

Fig. 11. The FileZilla software allows users to transfer files between two

different Operating Systems.

VI. CONCLUSIONS

Client/Server architecture is an industrial standard in the

modern software design. Web-based database applications

provide flexible and scalable features to organizations. This

paper defines the 5 SLOs and a multi-tier web-based

client/server curriculum was proposed for students to learn 5

main components – concepts, client-side programming,

server-side programming, server-side database programming

and integration to cover both conceptual knowledge and

hands-on skills. In this course, the hands-on projects are very

important to evaluate students’ studying. 5 project

assignments are provided as examples for students to

exercise. Students can utilize the XAMPP package and other

software used in this paper for working on the projects.

REFERENCES

[1] Retail e-commerce sales in the United States from 2016 to 2022. (2018).

[Online]. Available:

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-forecast/

[2] XAMPP. (2019). [Online]. Available:

https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html

[3] XAMPP Wiki. (2019). [Online]. Available:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XAMPP

[4] D. B. Maria. (2018).

[Online]. Available: https://mariadb.org/

[5] Introduction to PHP's built-in MYSQL functions. (2018). [Online].

Available:

http://www.phpforkids.com/php/php-mysql-database-functions.php

[6] Sublime text. (2018). [Online]. Available:

https://www.sublimetext.com/

[7] JavaScript tutorial. (2019). w3schools.com. [Online]. Available:

https://www.w3schools.com/js/

[8] Online JavaScript Editor. Tutorialspoint.com. [Online]. Available:

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/online_javascript_editor.php

[9] HTML color. [Online]. Available: http://htmlcolorcodes.com/

[10] Virutalbox, Oracle. (2019). [Online]. Available:

https://www.virtualbox.org/

[11] Ubuntu. (2019).

[Online]. Available: https://www.ubuntu.com/

Ching-Yu Huang is an assistant professor of the

School of Computer Science at Kean University,

Union, New Jersey, USA since September 2014. Dr.

Huang received a Ph.D. in computer & information

science from New Jersey Institute of Technology,

Newark, New Jersey, USA.

Prior to joining Kean University, Dr. Huang had

more than 16 years of experience in the industry and

academics in software development and R&D in bioinformatics. His research

focuses SNP genotype calling and cluster detection; image processing and

pattern recognition, especially in microarray and fingerprint; geotagged

images and location information reconstruction; database application

development; data processing automation; e-learning, educational

multimedia, methodology, and online tools for secondary schools and

colleges. Dr. Huang has more than 40 publications in journals and

conferences and more than 20 presentations in workshops and invited

lectures.

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