2. Functions to be distributed

An interactive application calls on system functions that are commonly referred to as "system services". For simplicity's sake, we can reduce these functions to two main families:

• data access functions provided by file access methods or generalized database systems (DBMS);

• functions for presenting information on the end-user terminal, which can be graphical.

Analysis of the structure of interactive applications, sometimes referred to as application architecture (figure 6 ), shows that an application is made up of four groups of functions, which will be detailed in the following paragraphs:

• the functions that...