RIA for Business What‘s next? 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

RIA Opportunities for the Business Software as a service (SaaS) that works Web 2.0 portals that are usable and efficient Mobile solutions SaaS: the software is provided by some external company but should be as good as a desktop application Web 2.0 portals: employee or customer portals where it is easy to contribute or categorize information Mobile solutions: RIA can leverage the mobile boom 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

Where are we? From Fat to Thin and back again Why was the fat client abandoned? Deployment? Only relevant in B2C scenarios Configuration? Windows made it hard to sandbox applications Architecture? Fat client requires distributed programming skills Crystal ball Alan Kay: I you want to predict the future you have invent it -> you also have to know the past to avoid repeating mistakes Windows had problems, but they were not insurmountable 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

Architecture Rich Fat Rich Thin RIA HTML Thin Client Server HTML Engine Presentation Logic Data Business Logic Client Presentation Logic Business Logic Data Presentation Logic Data Business Logic Presentation Logic Data Business Logic Rich UI Engine Server HTML solved the architectural problem at the price of substandard user interfaces 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

Developer Productivity Developer productivity suffered heavily with Web apps Separation of design/interaction from programming failed How can we pick up speed again? Domain specific language for the presentation layer Abstraction and gradual exposure of low-level details Do not force developers to deal with distributed programming Minimize the toolset (languages & tools & environments) Testing of user interfaces has to get simpler Just covering presentation layer development productivity Environments: development and production environments 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

Security Browser is still an insecure run-time environment RIA needs tightly sandboxed run-time environments Dedicated run-time environments outside of a browser are on the horizon. Java Consumer JRE, AIR, Silverlight, Mozilla Generic clients can help to improve security Dedicated run-time environments can also offer a better programming model 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

User Interface Interaction design skills got lost with Web applications Business applications It’s more about productivity/efficiency than flashiness We shall overcome the page metaphor Merging Web and desktop application styles B2C and B2B have different audiences Tailor the user interface to the audience Cross platform? Web applications: how to win a marathon with just one leg and your arms tied on your back. RIA: untie you arms and run using both legs! GUI designers had to cope with the limitations of the Web browser rather than coming up with brilliant interaction design 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

Mobile Devices Mobile devices will prevail - the demise of the PC Don’t try to simply shrink your user interface Customized component library Tailored interaction design Permanent Internet connection cannot be assumed Smartphones are already outselling laptops Just using a different CSS is not really the solution! Customized component library: supporting the interaction style, dealing with limited screen real estate and resources such as memory/CPU iPhone: what sets this device apart is the user interface design. It also shows that despite a fabulous browser interface web applications are not really usable. Tailored applications 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

What else? The future of Mash-ups End-user programming on steroids? Relevance in enterprise environments? Dependency management? 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

What are the challenges ahead of us? Architecture Developer productivity Security User interface Mobile devices 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com

Contents Where are we? Challenges History (Fat Client and then HTML), history repeats itself Why was the fat client abandoned? Challenges Architecture Server-side and opposing requirements (offline, desktop power) Caching, validation, data consistency, integration into portals Developer productivity Too many technologies with most AJAX toolkits Low level component libraries Frameworks? Cover the entire presentation layer (view creation, presentation logic, validation, data binding) Web designers cannot do interaction design (separation does not work) Domain Specific Languages (not just *XML) Security How to create a secure run-time environment as a prerequisite for secure applications (it takes more than that but it is needed for a start) User interfaces Know-how about building great user interfaces for client-server applications got lost with the advent of the Web applications Educate business analysts and developers Business: it’s about productivity and not so much about sexiness Mobile devices One cannot just scale down the user interface by using a different CSS! Different component set and different view and interaction design iPhone as an example Varia Mashups for business applications End user programming Manage your dependencies! 19/11/18 Copyright Canoo Engineering AG, www.canoo.com