Front End and Back End

Front End

1.  For software applications, front end is the same as user interface.

2.  In client/server applications, the client part of the program is often called the front end and the srver part is called the back end.

3. Compilers, the programs that translate source code into object code, are often composed of two parts: a front end and a back end. The front end is responsible for checking syntax and detecting errors, whereas the back end performs the actual translation into object code.

Back End

The back-end has three parts to it: server, application, and database.

To better explain how all of this works, let’s use the example of a customer trying to purchase a plane ticket using a website. Everything that the customer sees on the webpage is the front-end, as we have explained before, but once that customer enters all of his or her information, such as their name, billing address, destination, etc, the web application stores the information in a database that was created previously on the server in which the website is calling for information.

The web application creates, deletes, changes, renames, etc items in the database. For example, when a customer purchases a ticket, that creates an item in the database, but when they have a change in their order or they wish to cancel, the item in the database is changed.

A server, in the simplest form, is a computer accessed remotely that runs software to fulfill requests from clients. In our example, the server the customer’s browser is communicating with is where the database is stored and modified.

In short, when a customer wants to buy a ticket, the backend operation is the web application communicating with the server to make a change in a database stored on said server. Technologies like PHP, Ruby, Python, and others are the ones backend programmers use to make this communication work smoothly, allowing the customer to purchase his or her ticket with ease.