Today, the use of rich Internet application (RIA) technologies is planting the seeds for a return to client/server architectures where large clients are installed on the desktop.
This convergence of solutions is called the Fit Client or Desktop 2.0. While RIA technology is the darling of the Internet today, it’s likely that client/server architectures based on RIA technologies will become the dominant solution of tomorrow.
Examples of Fit Client platforms include Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Curl Nitro, and Mozilla Prism -- a list that is bound to expand over the next year. These solutions re-envision RIA as a new kind of client/server technology that spreads the processing load between the client and the server and offers end users a richer experience and more responsiveness.
Since the introduction of the Internet and the World Wide Web around 1994, the old client/server architectures, typified by large Visual Basic or PowerBuilder software clients directly accessing a shared database, have fallen by the wayside.
These first client/server platforms were attractive because they provided a richer experience for end-users by moving the software to the client machine, instead of requiring roundtrip processing of all user input at the server. If this sounds familiar it's probably because this is exactly the argument used to promote rich Internet application technologies, such as Adobe Flex, Ajax, Microsoft Silverlight, and Curl.
The primary difference between the new client/server architecture of today and those of yesterday is threefold:
Client applications are no longer accessing databases directly. Instead they access data services embodied in the ethos of Web 2.0.
Client/server applications do not run directly on the operating systems, but on an intermediary platform called a runtime. This makes portability easier -- a lesson learned in large part from Java.
With broadband, it’s no longer an issue to download an application that is a couple of MB or more. Distribution technologies even allow in-place updates of software right at the client machines, so distribution has become less of an issue than it was 10 years ago.
The Web with HTML is not going to go away. Neither are pure RIA solutions that run inside a browser and are downloaded each time they are used. Rather, all of these solutions will exist in parallel, offering organizations a spectrum of deployment and interaction options.
We didn't give up walking when the bike was invented; or biking when the automobile was invented; or driving when the airplane was invented. All of these travel modes exist at the same time and are used appropriately. The same will be true for network computing. We won’t abandon the Web for RIA, or RIA for the new client/server architectures. We’ll use them all appropriately.
— Richard Monson-Haefel, VP of Developer Relations, Curl Inc.
It is even impossible that we "abandon the Web for RIA, or RIA for the new client/server architectures." Instead, we will use the combination of all and profit in the best things all the technologies can offer.
However the new client/server architectures offer many flexibilities and capabilities to end users as they can tranform their destops into more powerful and standalone machines.
You have it right.Double ditto and exclamation point.The real issue with lightweight clients is not the few seconds a user has to wait for a round trip top the server. The real issue is the power consumed and the battery life reduced.
With more and more clients becoming “MID” (Mobile Internet Devices) DOU (Days of Use) will become more important.The biggest power consumer on a MID is the network radio, and the higher the bandwidth, the more power it sucks.My bet for RIA is on Sliverlight- (but then I do not know Curl).
MS lives in the low power space, and WinCE is power-thrifty from the ground up.POSIX systems were never designed to conserve power, and power management is a add on, not abuilt in feature.
One of the truly bright Microsofties on the planet is Dino Esposito. Lately he's been pushing the SPI, or Single Page Interface, model of programming to developers. The idea is, in a corn kernal, to make one very large ASP page and manipulate that page with all of the really cool ASP AJAX extensions. Oh, does that ever get ugly.
I developed a significant SPI application for a large financial institution, and things were working really well in communication between the middle-tier and the database. And things were incredibly speedy between the browser and the middle-tier. The average initial payload was a little over one meg and the browser had it back in under a half-second. Wonderful, right?
Of course not. The problem was the time it took the browser to render that data. Sometimes it was only several seconds. Other times, it would be a few seconds. With the SPI approach, you mark things as dirty and then clean them up with updates utilizing AJAX. It really cuts down on bandwidth and server load. But it stresses the browser to the point it has fits and becomes unpredictable. Then you have to start plugging in delayed-load logic, selective rendering logic and a lot of measurement tracking to make sure it all stays stable and speeds up the process up enough to prevent the users from tying you to the nearest railroad track.
Why, in an Internet world, the browser is still a key component in the equation is beyond me. They (choose one) are slow, subjective as to what standards they support, overly focused on server security, and, like most "one size fits all" products, fits nothing well in the process. HTML is a quirky language and most browsers forgive the faults and deliver the content as the primary mission.
I like the client/server approach because you can have a reasonable conversation between a few pieces of software--all with the same goal in mind. Microsoft had the chance with ActiveX to make a workable delivery system for client processing objects, but the darn thing let any salesman through the front door, resulting in a very bad reputation.
The browser is useful for most tasks but I am glad alternatives are gaining traction for those applications that require more stability, performance, and attention.
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