In his column this month in Database Trends and Applications, Guy Harrison reviews the many changes in applications over the past decade.
By 2000, the client-server applications of the 1990s were giving way to three-tier, web-based applications, he writes. However, these web applications were characterized by static content and relatively primitive user interfaces. Web applications improved over the decade, with increasingly dynamic and customizable content. Ajax and related technologies revolutionized the richness and flexibility of web-based applications by allowing JavaScript programs running in the browser to communicate independently with both the user and back-end server. In 2000, few believed serious desktop applications like spreadsheets and word processing could be web-based. Today, however, web applications represent a credible alternative to traditional desktop applications.
Continue reading Guy Harrison's column here.
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