D istributed N etwork C omputing where a network computer can perform computing functions in another computer on the same network. In the early days of the Internet, Telnet could be used for remote computing. In modern times, the trend is toward database access and computing among networked computers.
Development tools for data enabled frameworks are starting to emerge. New standards are also starting to emerge like CORBA's IIOP, Sun's RMI , amd Microsoft's DCOM. RMI is part of the Java programming language library which enables a Java program running on one computer to access the objects and methods of another Java program running on a different computer. Some vendors are also having their own proprietary extensions as well. IIOP is built upon CORBA technology. DCOM is Microsoft Corporation's standard for distrubuted network computing. See Database, ADO, and RDS .
A good reference for more extensive distributed network computing terminology is World Wide Web and Object Technology by Ashish B. Shahhttp at
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~wwwbtb/fall.96/book/chap19/index.html
Bob Jensen's summary document entitled "Networked Databases: Past, Present, and Future," can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/260wp/260wp.htm