This document will detail the general structure of the application, as well as the technologies used in their implementation.
End User —> Browser/Client ←–> Application Server ←–> Database
The client sends requests for content/actions to the application server, and receives web pages from the server. The server sends queries to the database and receives the output of those queries. In terms of the MVC paradigm, the client is the view, the server is the control, and the database is the model.
The database (DB) is a relational database that can be queried via SQL. The server consists of a number of Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) that are code representations of the various actions a user can perform, as well as object representations of the data in the DB. Requesting and receiving data is accomplished through a contact-first web services layer, including a WSDL detailing the services available to the application. EJBs will have access to this services layer for searches and displaying particular objects.