It’s pretty hard to imagine a successful modern business that can thrive without any internet presence. The quality of goods and services you provide is as important as the quality of code that makes your web application work flawlessly. Adopting a web app can simplify scalability, make your business closer to the customers, and improve your company’s brand awareness. However, if you decide to cooperate with a custom software development company, the meaning of some terms that will come up during the discussion of the project may not be completely clear.
The complexity of modern web applications has reached such a level that the word “architecture” pops up quite often. The reason is that before writing the first line of code, developers must determine how different parts of the future web application will relate to each other. Building a reliable software solution that works with tons of sensitive data is a task requiring scrupulous planning. But the question is, what exactly do we mean when we talk about the architecture of a web application. Let’s find out.
What’s Common Between Web Applications And Buildings
The very word “architecture”, as you know, describes a phenomenon much older than web applications or the Internet itself. In simple terms, web application architecture can be described as a blueprint showing how the application components interact. Before building the actual house, the architect must plan how to combine a stunning facade with a reliable foundation, walls, and floors. In the case of a web application, developers deal with things of a more dynamic nature built with code and data and must decide how UI, databases, and middleware systems will operate on the web.
The seemingly simple scheme of working with the application has dozens of interactions between the sub-components included in its architecture. The web application architecture is a basis guaranteeing efficiency, reliability, security, and effortless scalability. It helps meet the needs of constantly changing customer expectations, handle loads, and quickly adapt to new business requirements. For example, a properly designed web application architecture may enable modular structure, implying that developers can build new functional modules and integrate them into the software solution as your business grows and requires new functionality.
The App’s Side That Users See And What Lies Beneath It
The code that the development team writes while creating the application relates to one of its following parts: client-side or server-side. Client-side code forms the application’s frontend part and is needed for everything a user sees in the browser and uses to interact with the application. Server-side code implements the business logic and is responsible for handling all the HTTP requests. This part of the application is also known as the backend.
To implement the frontend part of the application, developers use CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and a plethora of libraries and frameworks based on this programming language helping to simplify the development process. As the name suggests, all this code is processed on the client-side of the application, i.e. in the web browser. It reacts to the user’s input to provide required information but cannot directly modify the information stored in the database.
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For that purpose, the server-side code is needed. To implement the backend functionality, developers use such programming languages as C#, Python, PHP, Ruby, and many others. This code runs on a server, responds to requests sent from the client-side of the application, and sends back required data.
Web App Models
Depending on how many resources and databases you have, you can build an application that follows one of the three main models. The simplest one implies that you have a single server and only one database. In this case, low reliability is the price you’ll have to pay for the relative ease of implementation. Furthermore, if you face some hardware issues, the application loses access to data, which means it can’t operate properly. Therefore, one must use it only in case of significant budgetary constraints. Another option is to use this model to test the application code during the development to understand better how it works and whether it has any bugs.
A more reliable option includes multiple web servers and a single database. This model uses a more sophisticated approach. When the application sends a request, the server machine processes it and writes changes to the database that is stored outside this server. Since at least two of them are used, such an approach’s reliability is somewhat higher than the previous one. If one of the servers goes down, the other one can handle all data received from the application. The most reliable way to solve reliability issues is to use multiple servers with multiple databases. In this scenario, you can decide whether to store the exact copies of data you owe on each available server or distribute your data among them.
There’s More Than Enough App Architectures to Choose From
Now, let’s take a look at the types of web application architectures. It’s important to remember that you should choose a specific architecture according to the particularities of your business. Each of them determines how web application components will interact with each other and depend on business requirements, app logic, and other factors. A solution that works for some companies may not work for others. Therefore, if you’re unsure which one suits you better, it can be a good idea to consult with a company providing web app development services before investing in an application. A reliable company with solid experience in the field that knows how to translate your business issues into the code that solves them will help you to make sure you won’t waste your money.
Single Page Applications help reduce the application’s load time, which enables a better user experience. Such apps rely on the AJAX technology and don’t reload the whole page each time the user wants to retrieve some new data. Instead, this architecture allows updating the portion of data on the same page as it’s required. During these minor updates, the rest of the page stays untouched.
Microservices architecture allows developers to create software solutions that consist of many lightweights and as fast as shark services, each of which performs a small task. Developers can implement such services and add them to the application independently to expand its functionality. The described approach helps to simplify the deployment and enables the use of different programming languages.
Serverless architecture can be an excellent option for those who want to free themselves from server support and maintenance activities. In this scenario, the code of the application is executed on the cloud service provider’s side.
Google initially introduced Progressive Web Apps to provide users with a close-to-native experience. They enable rich functionality and free users from the necessity to download anything from the app stores. Instead, such apps can be distributed by using URLs. Compatibility with modern browsers and offline mode support quickly made PWAs beloved by both developers and end-users.
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Conclusions
The pace of modern technologies development sometimes leads to confusion when choosing a particular software development approach. There’s no shortage of programming languages, libraries, and frameworks, leading to an extensive choice of how web application users can interact with data. The situation is also complicated by the fact that it’s not enough to write good code. It’s also important how you compose the components of an app together. Thereby, your business success depends on which architecture for your future application you will choose.
If you want to discuss your project with specialists possessing relevant expertise, do not hesitate to contact us, we will help you with pleasure.