The Structure of Mathematica

The first thing you see when you start Mathematica is the front end. The front end is the part of Mathematica that provides the user interface through Mathematica notebooks, menus, and customizable buttons and palettes. The blank document, called a notebook, is the primary means of communicating with the kernel, Mathematica's calculation engine.

Complete Technical Publication Environment

The Mathematica front end is actually a complete technical documentation package that includes a word processor with a spell checker, mathematical typesetting, graphics, animation, and sound. All of your calculations, comments, and graphics are collected in a Mathematica notebook for easy reference.

Notebooks are completely platform independent, so you can email them to colleagues, publish them on the internet, or transfer them to other computers without losing any information or formatting.

The Client Server Design

The front end and the kernel of Mathematica are two separate applications that communicate through a protocol called MathLink. When you start Mathematica, you see only the front end. Many users interact with the kernel, Mathematica's calculation engine, entirely through the front end, although advanced users may access the kernel functionality in other ways.

Splitting the kernel and the front end has the following advantages:

• Because the kernel and the front end are two separate programs, you can continue working in the front end (i.e., type notes, prepare additional calculations, and so on) while evaluations are running in the kernel.

• You can use the front end to access and run evaluations on kernels across any network supporting TCP/IP or even over the internet. This gives you the flexibility to run calculations on more powerful computers than the one on your desk.