Ok, I am not entirely sure if that is a right forum to post my question. It has many aspects (I think), it is rather a question of architectonic nature. Please correct me if I am mistaken posting it here.
I am trying to decide on architecture of a solution that has rather complex UI in the back office component. This app will be hosted in one place and accessible by clients from all over the world. It will have to be accessible trough firewalls with not or minimal configuration at clients firewall settings (port 80 using https). I am trying to figure out if it is feasible to use
applet swing client. I have not seen many projects using this approach as a mater of fact just one. It was rather complex time tracking/accounting system. I was not very impressing with speed of the interface at times (dual processor). I could not see any prohibiting risk when I thought about this yesterday. I am starting to suspect that this whole HTML interface (APS/JSP) thing is web designers conspiracy
.
Risk:
-Java Swing performance (I am not sure it that is still the case),
-Maintainability (client code will be on client workstation how to manage updates and version control WebStart?),
-Proprietary protocol over HTTPS and in case of use of XML considerable stress on client�s workstation resources ergo performance drawback,
Benefits:
-Sending just data not interfaces over the network therefore lower traffic (not sure if that is very important when using proxies on client side),
-Event driven interface with well defined and proven components therefore more intuitive, consistent and maintainable,
-Productivity tools available,
Any thought ideas, pointing out my faulty logic or misinformation will be greatly appreciate!
Best!