pplication structure and its development process. This was precisely the moment when the wave of object-oriented-language-based programming became widely embraced. Previously, this software approach flourished mostly in avant-garde academic research communities who knew about Smalltalk and Common Lisp Object System (CLOS). This was also one of the driving reasons C+ + was subsequently created and then became well established. The Java paradigm was invented by Sun Microsystems, which like SO many other UNIX vendors had been plagued by the UNIX flavors that bred incompatibilities. Sun Microsystems had the noble objective of achieving com- plete code portability over new architectures and operating systems. However, from a programmer's point of view, it was largely built on technology that C+ + had already introduced to the world. The IT architectural hierarchy by that time had been transformed into a community environment, where the mainframe was running central applications, such as payroll, while departmental machines were running their own applications. The lower one descended on this IT hierarchy tree, the more one was likely to run into client-server arrangements. Client-server arrangements fed data into PCs and engineering workstations on individual desks running a plethora of applications from accounting spreadsheets and general ledgers to CAD/CAM modeling and mathematical simulations. As mentioned earlier, in addition to revolutionizing the world with the introduction of the PC, IBM responded to the IT decentralization trend by introducing its own series of midrange systems. These were powerful engineering workstations with RISC CPUs that soon gave birth to powerful decen- tralized servers such as the RS/6000 supercomputer (better known worldwide by its prowess that eventually allowed it to beat the famous world champion Gary Kasparov in a game of chess). Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reser