4 Client Requirements

This chapter describes client-side requirements.

4.1 Client Requirements

Clients require desktop class computers supported by the browsers. For clients running the Windows operating system, the minimum recommended CPU is a Pentium 4 with 100MB of available RAM. Client monitor resolution should meet or exceed 1024x768 and should support at least 256 colors.

For effective operation, Agile recommends at least 250Kb/sec transfer rate for each Java client and 1000Kb/sec transfer rate for each Web client. The Web client requires more bandwidth than the Java client because it is a thin client. Thin clients depend on the server not only for data, but also formatting information, which increases the total amount of information transferred. See "Network Bandwidth Requirements" for information on how to determine how much bandwidth is needed for a given system.

Although the two clients are expected to perform similarly under ideal network conditions and because the Java client is more sensitive to network latency, performance of the Java client and Web client is expected to diverge as network latency increases. Therefore, Agile recommends using the Java client within corporate firewalls with low network latency.

A Java client user is expected to consume slightly less application server resources than a Web client because the Java client can use the desktop client for some work. Sorting data tables is a good example of how the Java client differs from the Web client. The Web client must ask the server to resort the table after selecting a new sort order. The Java client can reformat the table by itself.

The Java client connects directly to the application server using the application server specific native protocol, such as T3 with Oracle WebLogic.