Perfect question cocoon..
As per my knowledge, initially it was designed in perl for sys admin(UNIX guys)2005, later using python UI was developed in 2008 and now they using JSON for better UI and results.
With Enterprise, you can search for logs using splunk CherryPy web browser UI where one can search the logs ,customize the Dashboards are Configuration,etc.where you can Enjoy the beauty of Splunk.
with Forwarder, we can collect the logs and send to respective Search Head or Indexer to index the data.It doesn't have any UI as of now.
ALL THE BEST
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