We hope to provide you with a better understanding of how Chat Blazer works through this overview description of the software architecture. We will highlight the various characteristics of Chat Blazer and a brief description of each of the characteristics below.
Chat Blazer is a client server software. What is a "client" and what is a "server"? Basically, a "client" is a process or program running on a machine that communicates with another process or program on another or same machine. In the context of Chat Blazer , the client is actually the web browser which runs the chat client applet. The chat client is actually a Java applet (applet - a mini Java program that runs on a browser) that runs under the web browser. The Chat Blazer chat client applet then communicates with the Chat Blazer server, a process or program running on a remote machine. Our Chat Blazer Enterprise comes with an optional HTML client module which allows your chat users to chat on a non-Java enabled environment (e.g. webTV).
Whenever a person goes to your web page containing your Chat Blazer client, which is actually a Java applet, the chat client will get loaded and display either an image or standard but customizable text "Click here to chat" button. When the person clicks on the button, the Chat Blazer client will send a packet of data over the network, usually the Internet, to the Chat Blazer server which is running on a machine some distance away. The Chat Blazer server receives that packet of data and begins handshaking (an authentication and connection process). Once the handshake is completed, the Chat Blazer client is then issued a connection to the server and the person can chat with other chat users already connected to the Chat Blazer server via their own Chat Blazer clients (or their own browsers).
The entire Chat Blazer software, consisting of the Chat Blazer client, server and administrative manager (optionally the moderator module), is programmed in the Java™ language. The advantage of using Java™ as the development language is that the user can port the software across multiple and distinctively different platforms. A user can port the Chat Blazer from a UNIX to an NT machine, without any customization or messy tweaking work. All that is required is that the platform already has a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed. There is a list of the available JVMs for the various platforms at Sun MicroSystems™ Java™ web site.