Software whose data is designed to be able to be accessed simultaneously by multiple users, must employ a more complex system architecture. In these systems, the data typically resides upon one computer called a server and is accessed by users from other computers running software called client software. This arrangement is used by multi-user versions of Captools/net, and can be depicted as follows for a typical small-office setup:
In this example, the Database and Captools/net Server-side applications are shown as residing on the Server computer. The Database actually consists of the files which contain the actual data, and the software that processes the SQL commands operate on that data, including fetching and updating data. The Captools/net server-side software consists of a number of programs which request data from the database software and pass that data on to the client computer, or which perform computations on the data to either generate output such as reports, or which gather data from external sources such as custodian data files or web downloads to populate the database.
The Captools/net Desktop software provides an end user with a view into their data and gives them an opportunity to edit data with an editing friendly interface. However, it performs very little in the way of computations or other functions. These are performed on the server computer. This means that most important software updates can be confined to the server computer, thereby simplifying I.T. department's and the user lives in a large organization with many users.
Many of the important data-handling and computational tasks are triggered on an automatic basis, (e.g. data downloads, scheduled valuations, etc.) or are left to be managed by a dedicated data administrator. Many of these tasks can be administered remotely through browser-based interfaces, as can the reporting process.