Body Girdles

Such terms as ”web app”, ”front-end architecture”, ”Web 2.0”, and ”HTML5 apps” have recently become trendy. Unfortunately these terms tend to be used in a misleading context which doesn’t consider the full specificity of implementation and using web app architecture. Today we’ll try to find out more about the forms of web application architecture in the light of the latest web trends and key issues that matter to software owners.

We’ll outline 3 main types of web architecture and discuss their advantages and disadvantages for three points of view: software owner, software contractor (developer) and person. There can be other types but they basically come down to these three as their subtypes.

First we’ll define a web application: it is a client-server application – there exists a browser (the client) and a web server. The logic of a web application is distributed on the list of server and the client, there’s a channel for information exchange, and the data is stored mainly on the server. Further details depend on the architecture: different styles distribute the logic in different ways. It can be positioned on the server in addition to on the client side.

It’s near to impossible to judge these very different architectures impartially. But we’ll make an effort to, using several criteria of evaluation:

User:
Responsiveness/Usability. Updates of data on pages, switching between pages (response time). Such qualities of interface as richness and intuitiveness in use.
Linkability. Capability to save bookmarks and links to various sections of the website.
Offline work. Speaks for itself.

Developer:
Speed of development. Addition of new functional features, refactoring, parallelizing the development process between developers, layout designers, etc.
Performance. Maximum speed of response from the server with minimum consumption of computation power.
Scalability. Capability to increase computation power or disc space under increases in amounts of information and/or number of users. In case the allocated scalable system can be used, one must provide data consistence, availability and partition tolerance (CAP theorem). It’s also worth noting that the case, once the number of features/screens of the client app is increased at the software owner’s request, depends upon the framework and implementation as opposed to the type of web architecture.
Testability. Possibility and easiness of automated unit testing.

Software owner:
Functional extendability. Adding functionality within minimal time and budget.
SEO. Users must be in a position to find the application through any search engine.
Fort Lauderdale architects . Expenses on app infrastructure – hardware, network infrastructure, maintenance staff.
Security. The software owner must be sure both business data and information about users are kept secure. As the main security criterion we’ll consider the chance for changes in functionality of app behavior on the client side, and all associated risks. Standard dangers are the same for the compared architectures. We do not consider security on the ‘server-client’ channel, because each one of these architectures are equally subjected to break-ins – this channel can be the same.
Conversion: site – mobile or desktop application. Possibility to create the application on mobile markets or to make a desktop application out of it with minimal additional costs.

Some of these criteria might seem inaccurate, but the purpose of the article is not to show what’s good and what’s bad. It’s more of an in depth review that presents the possible options of choice.

Let’s outline three main types of web applications according to the roles performed by the server and your client browser.

Type 1: Server-side HTML

Probably the most widespread architecture. The server generates HTML-content and sends it to the client as a full-fledged HTML-page. Sometimes this architecture is called ”Web 1.0”, because it was the first to appear and currently dominates the net.

Responsiveness/Usability: 1/5. The least optimal value among these architectures. It’s so since there is a great amount of data transferred between your server and the client. The user has to wait until the whole page reloads, giving an answer to trivial actions, for instance, when only a portion of the page should be reloaded. UI templates on your client depend on the frameworks applied on the server. Because of the limitations of mobile internet and huge amounts of transferred data, this architecture is hardly applicable in the mobile segment. There are no means of sending instant data updates or changes instantly. If we consider the possibility of real-time updates via generation of ready chunks of content on the server side and updates of the client (through AJAX, WebSockets), plus design with partial changes of a full page, we’ll go beyond this architecture.

Linkability: 5/5. The best of the three, since it is the easiest implementable. It’s because of the fact that by default one URL receives particular HTML-content on the server.

SEO: 5/5. Rather easily implemented, much like the previous criterion – the content is known beforehand.
Speed of development: 5/5. This can be the oldest architecture, so it is possible to choose any server language and framework for particular needs.

Scalability: 4/5. If we check out the generation of HTML, under the increasing load comes the moment when load balance will be needed. There’s a a lot more complicated situation with scaling databases, but this is the same for these three architectures.

Performance: 3/5. Tightly bound to responsiveness and scalability regarding traffic, speed etc. Performance is relatively low just because a big amount of data should be transferred, containing HTML, design, and business data. Therefore it’s essential to generate data for the whole page (not only for the changed business data), and all of the accompanying information (such as design).

Testability: 4/5. The positive thing is that there surely is no need in special tools, which support JavaScript interpretation, to check the front-end, and this content is static.

Security: 4/5. The application behavior logic is on the server side. However, data are transferred overtly, so a protected channel may be needed (which is basically a story of any architecture that concerns the server). All the security functionality is on the server side.

Conversion: site – mobile or desktop application: 0/5. In most cases it’s simply impossible. Rarely there’s an exception (more of exotics): for instance, if the server is realized upon node.js, and there are no large databases; or if one utilizes third-party web services for data acquisition (however, it is a more sophisticated variant of architecture). Thus you can wrap the application form in node-webkit or analogous means.