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Apps v. WebApps:
As HTML evolved from a static, "generation 1" brochure sites to reporting tools and eventually into interactive tools the tools vendors have struggled to make the paradigm work. And have made a valiant effort.
But performance limitations can really not be ignored. Hard-working call-center persons need response times sub-100ms; but consider this:
web browsers such as IE will go from 1 second to render a page to 1 minute as soon as the operating system has to use the pagefile (swap space). Moreover, the round trip to retrieve data may be sub 1 second
but rarely is sub 100ms; so the users are forced to use a tool worse than that of the former generation and even those generations before even back into the 1980's.
The maintainability/deployability/upgradeability of a website is very desirable but for operational systems the real needs may not be met due to inherent restrictions:
- Web Browser rendering slowness
- Difficulties of creating high touch GUI's in HTML/JavaScript/Web technologies
- Server round-trip times
- Server latencies
- Operating system process scheduling issues
So, the next time a CTO/Architect recommends adding operational capabilities to your reporting website then ask him or her for
concrete requirements on the response time and spend the week doing a feasibility study rather than potentially mis-invest
millions of dollars in creating a half-useful operational system.
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