I hear the word server in all sorts of contexts whenever computers are involved. What is a server and how does it relate to a PC?
In: Technology
It’s simply one half of a common way of splitting computing tasks across multiple computers (the other half is the “client”).
Think of it like being in a restaurant, because that’s the pattern. You’re the customer – the client. You give your server your order. They go off, and after a while they bring what you asked for. You don’t need to know what happened behind the scenes; your server doesn’t need to know why you ordered what you did. You still got your food (or maybe not – keeping things simple here – but even if all you get is an apology that they’re out of syrup for your icecream sundae, the pattern still works; you asked for something, the server went off and came back with a response).
In the case of computers, it’s the same thing, except instead of people, we have computers talking. The client (which could be code running on your phone, for example) sends a request that asks the server to do something (return whatever a hyperlink points at, say). The server goes off, (hopefully) does what’s been asked, and returns a result of some sort. The client code doesn’t need to know how the server did what it did; the server doesn’t need to know why the client made the request it did. Things still happen.
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