Author: Venkat Madipadaga, Chief Architect – SIDGS
“Thick clients are tough to maintain/deploy” is just a myth anymore in various perspectives, especially for java apps, ofcourse with some exceptions. With the introduction of Java webstart, it has become much easier to deploy and manage thick clients. This solution brings good from both worlds, web UI & thick client. Using this technology, you can deploy your thick client application in a centralized location (server) and access the application to serve HTTP/TCP requests from your workstation as if it’s a web app (atleast from the end-user perspective, there is lot of technical things that go under-covers to make that happen, which would be out of scope for this discussion). So, basically to visualize it better, you click a url link to the application from a web page as if you are launching a web page but launch the thick client instead, with all those rich UI features that come with workstation based clients. I recommend this solution for any application that need to meet following combination of requirements:
1. Access local workstation resources (e.g. Serial ports, RFID readers, USB ports, Local file system etc.)
2. Need quick UI response
3. Need easy deployment, upgrade and maintenance of application from a centralized location without needing to install on each and every end-user workstations/computers (e.g. application hosted by IIS on Windows server)
4. Need rich UI look & Feel
5. Need to server both HTTP and/or TCP requests
6. Need the reliability of thick client application
7. Need to work off-line
Note 1: Even though this technology is designed for Java applications, it can be used for non-java applications with some intelligent design.
Note 2: This technology currently have some limitations like, being able to handle dynamic data as an input to launch your application, but again with some intelligent design, we can over come most of the deficiencies Webstart possess.
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