Rich Web Applications with Java and Ajax

The Evolution of the Enterprise Application

Is evolution really circular? Or, maybe it’s a never-ending spiral. This appears to be the case when we examine the history of the enterprise software application. In the early era of enterprise computing there were no trade-offs made with regard to an appropriate application model. There was only one option — a thin-client model leveraging centralized servers and delivering presentation to the user via a dumb terminal.

With the onset of the personal computer, the model changed, and power to the desktop had a strong evolutionary effect on the application model, moving it away from centralized computing toward a distributed model where individual computers hosted their own set of applications. This fat-client model pushed computation and presentation to the client. With advancement in graphics technologies, it became feasible to provide the user with a rich interactive presentation environment for applications. But these advancements did not come for free. Power to the desktop resulted in skyrocketing costs for deployment, management and maintenance of applications. Total cost of ownership for applications within the enterprise increased dramatically...

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