Consider the Java Enterprise Edition™ (J2EE) architectural layers (see the Oracle J2EE 1.4 tutorial for more detail):
The IBM Cúram Social Program Management™ client-side presentation tier consists of HTML user interfaces rendered by a standard browser program on the user's desktop. Only pure HTML user interfaces are directly supported using client generation tools. Other types of clients could also be developed using generated Server Access Beans to connect to the server.
At runtime, the HTML user interface is generated by a server-side presentation layer consisting of Java™ Server Pages. Browser clients communicate with this layer over http, typically encrypted using SSL for security reasons.
The server-side presentation layer communicates with the server-side business logic using the RMI-IIOP protocol. IBM Cúram Social Program Management™ typically presents business objects in the business logic tier as Session EJBs although, as mentioned previously, they can also be simple Java™ RMI objects for the simpler deployment option often used during application development. In any event, business objects are ultimately plain Java™ objects (POJOs) with the middleware plumbing filled in transparently during the application build.
The back end of the IBM Cúram Social Program Management™ architecture is a relational database as well as other enterprise and legacy applications. Again, the middleware "plumbing" required to communicate with the EIS is generated.