What makes a network application?

[sde]

In theory, does a network application generally have a 'server' application which all the 'client' apps access via sockets?

Would a 'client' only application which accesses a common database be considered a network app?

This is just something I was thinking about tonight as I'm beginning to get more into application dev vs. web dev.

I suppose one could say that a network application is anything that sends or receives information over a network, but I'm trying ask the question in the context with "good programming practices" in mind.

The purpose of the application would be to have multiple users read/write data to a db.

[npa]

> I suppose one could say that a network application is anything
> that sends or receives information

There is no "suppose" about it, that is the very definition.

[Belisarius]

Well, there's the client-server model, which is the easiest to understand and appropriate for 90% of all things networking. Then you can have a distributed model, in which all parts communicate with all other parts without the concept of a centralized server. Then you have these weird fringe models, like what Bluetooth uses, and Windows elections are similar I suppose, where a network forms and disolves on the fly, and each server can also be a client.

[sde]

that's cool, .. thank you. i guess that answered an un-asked question ... what different types of network applications are there =)