Rich Internet Applications with Real-time push mechanism

Abstract

From last two decades the internet has became a house hold source of information, education, sales, marketing, advertising etc. It has become a part of everyone’s life up to some extent. Everyday more and more people are getting introduced to internet and use it for different reasons. The reason could be as simple as paying bills or anything else. There are different user groups using internet with different level of knowledge, and for this reason, the tasks they want to perform should be design in such a way that all the user groups no matter what knowledge background they come from, should feel comfortable performing them. This brings a responsibility on the developers of websites and web applications to implement well designed products which are suitable for usage of everyone. This report addresses the traditional web application development, and brings new methods in discussion which could potentially make the development process and implementation easier and richer. The report introduces the audience to the new terminology called as RIA. RIA uses a different technology stack for development of web applications then the traditional methods used currently. The report discusses the benefits and limitations of the RIA technologies and what can be achieved through it. Further the author talks about the efficiency which can be gained in terms of execution time and richness which could be gained in terms of graphical user interface through the usage of RIA technology stack. The author discusses a particular web application called as GWT, and develops a small part of it using RIA technology stack as a prototype, and compares the efficiency in terms of “execution time” with the same component when developed using traditional methods. The author concludes with the discussion on the results of the tests performed on the development prototype. The report is an interesting introduction to RIA and would server as an initial step to learn about the technologies under discussion.