A computer system has five major components: hardware, software, people, documentation, and data. Without any one of these components, there would be little or no purpose of the system. Of course, there is another version that identifies the input–process–output (IPOS) model, which consists of inputs, processing, outputs, and storage (referring to main memory, not disk drives). In either of these models, software and processing, while equally important to the other components of their respective models, represent the catalyst that allows us to accomplish something on a computer.
In the first three chapters of this book, we looked at the typical hardware of a network server, including its external and internal hardware and the hardware that's used for storing data. In this chapter, we will move on and look at the primary software of...