RIA

Today's application have notoriously evolve into a new shape which integrated nicely to the Internet. The word "Web 2.0", they said about the phenomenon, is a buzz word rapidly shaping into the next best thing that would change the way software interact. This type of application is developing and maturing quite fast and many enterprises already implement it.

Anyway, what is "Web 2.0"?

My friends joke about this quite frantically. Any website out there using the word "Under Construction" is considered as old web or "Web 1.0". But, if the website using sleek design and added the word "BETA" on the banner, it should be considered "Web 2.0". Ahem.... Actually, the "Web 2.0" is like the client server tiers several years ago. The different is, this application is using HTTP protocol as communication protocol and using standard data encapsulation such as XML or JSON for data encapsulation.

There are four well known implementation out there:

1. AJAX or Asynchronous JAvascript XML. This technology is using latest Web standards to do the scripting so it could be run under any descent modern browser. This technology basically run under Javascript and send the user input dynamically without reloading the whole page. Many popular tools out there exist to create this one, including the infamous Ruby on Rails.
2. JavaFX. This is an attempt by SUN Microsystem to create great client application far greater usability and ease to develop than Java(tm). As of this time of writing, the technology is a framework run under Java, but some attempts have been made to optimise the code including creating a compiler which compile the JavaFX code into native Java bytecode.
3. Adobe Flex. This is an attempt by Adobe to build Web application using Flash technology.
4. Microsoft Silverlight. This is an attempt by Microsoft bundled with their famous .NET platform.

One more thing to add, Web 2.0 also well known as Rich Internet Application (RIA).

I will continue to discuss this later if time permits (and I'm not lazy as I am).