Web Application
Overview
A web application is a software application that runs on a remote server. In most cases, Web browsers are used to access Web applications, over a network, such as the Internet. Some web applications are used in intranets, in companies and schools, for example.
All web-based database applications have three primary components: A web browser (or client), a web application server, and a database server. Web-based database applications rely on a database server, which provides the data for the application.
Purpose
Advantages of Web Apps:
A Better User Experience – With responsive design, it’s a lot easier and cheaper to make a web based system user friendly across multiple platforms and various screen sizes.
Flexible Access – Employees can work from anywhere with internet access.
Client Secure Login – Impress clients with a modern web portal and improve customer service with automated processes.
Easy Setup – It takes a couple of minutes to setup a new user; provide a URL, username and password and they’re away.
Always Up To Date – As everyone is accessing the same version of the web app via a URL, they will always be accessing the most up-to-date version of the software.
Storage Increase – With the availability of the cloud, storage space is virtually infinite.
Unfortunately, There Are Downsides To Web Apps Too…
A web application might not suit every business out there. If you’re only going to be using the system in a single office, and have a dodgy or slow internet access then a web app might not be the right technical investment for your business. Whilst adopting digital transformation is key to many businesses’ survival, it is worth weighing up both the pros and cons of development before making an investment.
How it Works
How a web application works step-by-step
Step 1: The user accesses a web application via a web browser or mobile application, triggering a request to the web server over the Internet. Note that there may be security measures (i.e. firewalls or cloud access security brokers) and load balancers in
Step 2: The web server forwards the request to the web application server. The web application server performs the requested task – such as querying the database or processing the data – then generates the results of the requested data.
Step 3: The web application server sends the results back to the web server.
Step 4: the web server delivers the requested information to the client (desktop, mobile device, tablet, etc.) and the information appears on the user’s display.
Features
Cloud-hosted and scalable
ASP.NET Core is optimized for the cloud (public cloud, private cloud, any cloud) because it is low-memory and high-throughput. The smaller footprint of ASP.NET Core applications means you can host more of them on the same hardware, and you pay for fewer resources when using pay-as-you go cloud hosting services. The higher-throughput means you can serve more customers from an application given the same hardware, further reducing the need to invest in servers and hosting infrastructure.
Cross platform
ASP.NET Core is cross-platform and can run on Linux, macOS, and Windows. This opens up many new options for both development and deployment of apps built with ASP.NET Core. Docker containers - both Linux and Windows - can host ASP.NET Core applications, allowing them to take advantage of the benefits of containers and microservices.
Modular and loosely coupled
NuGet packages are first-class citizens in .NET Core, and ASP.NET Core apps are composed of many libraries through NuGet. This granularity of functionality helps ensure apps only depend on and deploy functionality they actually require, reducing their footprint and security vulnerability surface area.
ASP.NET Core also fully supports dependency injection, both internally and at the application level. Interfaces can have multiple implementations that can be swapped out as needed. Dependency injection allows apps to loosely couple to those interfaces, rather than specific implementations, making them easier to extend, maintain, and test.
Easily tested with automated tests
ASP.NET Core applications support unit testing, and their loose coupling and support for dependency injection makes it easy to swap infrastructure concerns with fake implementations for test purposes. ASP.NET Core also ships with a TestServer that can be used to host apps in memory. Functional tests can then make requests to this in-memory server, exercising the full application stack (including middleware, routing, model binding, filters, etc.) and receiving a response, all in a fraction of the time it would take to host the app on a real server and make requests through the network layer. These tests are especially easy to write, and valuable, for APIs, which are increasingly important in modern web applications.
Traditional and SPA behaviors supported
Traditional web applications have involved little client-side behavior, but instead have relied on the server for all navigation, queries, and updates the app might need to make. Each new operation made by the user would be translated into a new web request, with the result being a full page reload in the end user's browser. Classic Model-View-Controller (MVC) frameworks typically follow this approach, with each new request corresponding to a different controller action, which in turn would work with a model and return a view. Some individual operations on a given page might be enhanced with AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) functionality, but the overall architecture of the app used many different MVC views and URL endpoints. In addition, ASP.NET Core MVC also supports Razor Pages, a simpler way to organize MVC-style pages.
Single Page Applications (SPAs), by contrast, involve very few dynamically generated server-side page loads (if any). Many SPAs are initialized within a static HTML file that loads the necessary JavaScript libraries to start and run the app. These apps make heavy usage of web APIs for their data needs and can provide much richer user experiences.
Many web applications involve a combination of traditional web application behavior (typically for content) and SPAs (for interactivity). ASP.NET Core supports both MVC (Views or Page based) and web APIs in the same application, using the same set of tools and underlying framework libraries.
Simple development and deployment
ASP.NET Core applications can be written using simple text editors and command-line interfaces, or full-featured development environments like Visual Studio. Monolithic applications are typically deployed to a single endpoint. Deployments can easily be automated to occur as part of a continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) pipeline. In addition to traditional CI/CD tools, Microsoft Azure has integrated support for git repositories and can automatically deploy updates as they are made to a specified git branch or tag. Azure DevOps provides a full-featured CI/CD build and deployment pipeline, and GitHub Actions provide another option for projects hosted there.
Traditional ASP.NET and Web Forms
In addition to ASP.NET Core, traditional ASP.NET 4.x continues to be a robust and reliable platform for building web applications. ASP.NET supports MVC and Web API development models, as well as Web Forms, which is well suited to rich page-based application development and features a rich third-party component ecosystem. Microsoft Azure has great longstanding support for ASP.NET 4.x applications, and many developers are familiar with this platform.
Blazor
Blazor is included with ASP.NET Core 3.0 and later. It provides a new mechanism for building rich interactive web client applications using Razor, C#, and ASP.NET Core. It offers another solution to consider when developing modern web applications. There are two versions of Blazor to consider: server-side and client-side.
Server-side Blazor was released in 2019 with ASP.NET Core 3.0. As its name implies, it runs on the server, rendering changes to the client document back to the browser over the network. Server-side Blazor provides a rich client experience without requiring client-side JavaScript and without requiring separate page loads for each client page interaction. Changes in the loaded page are requested from and processed by the server and then sent back to the client using SignalR.
Client-side Blazor will be released in 2020 and will eliminate the need to render changes on the server. Instead, it will leverage WebAssembly to run .NET code within the client. The client can still make API calls to the server if needed to request data, but all client-side behavior runs in the client via WebAssembly, which is already supported by all major browsers and is just a Javascript library.
Technology
There are two main categories of coding, scripting and programming for creating Web Applications:
I. Client Side Scripting / Coding - Client Side Scripting is the type of code that is executed or interpreted by browsers.
Client Side Scripting is generally viewable by any visitor to a site (from the view menu click on "View Source" to view the source code).
Below are some common Client Side Scripting technologies:
HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
JavaScript
Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
jQuery (JavaScript Framework Library - commonly used in Ajax development)
MooTools (JavaScript Framework Library - commonly used in Ajax development)
Dojo Toolkit (JavaScript Framework Library - commonly used in Ajax development)
II. Server Side Scripting / Coding - Server Side Scripting is the type of code that is executed or interpreted by the web server.
Server Side Scripting is not viewable or accessible by any visitor or general public.
Below are the common Server Side Scripting technologies:
PHP (very common Server Side Scripting language - Linux / Unix based Open Source - free redistribution, usually combines with MySQL database)
Zend Framework (PHP's Object Oriented Web Application Framework)
ASP (Microsoft Web Server (IIS) Scripting language)
ASP.NET (Microsoft's Web Application Framework - successor of ASP)
ColdFusion (Adobe's Web Application Framework)
Ruby on Rails (Ruby programming's Web Application Framework - free redistribution)
Perl (general purpose high-level programming language and Server Side Scripting Language - free redistribution - lost its popularity to PHP)
Python (general purpose high-level programming language and Server Side Scripting language - free redistribution)
FAQs
How much does a website cost?
We always do our best to make our prices as competitive as possible and do annual market research. on costs in the sector. The sum needed to develop a site depends on labour costs and the number of specialists involved in a given project. Website creation involves: concept development, designing architecture, programming, installation and customising, text-writing, graphics creation, translating and testing. A website can be either cheap and template-based or more expensive and original. Contact our Sales for a quote.
How long have you been on market?
We have been in operation since 2017.
How many design revisions do you provide?
First of all, we discuss and formalise all of the web design requirements in advance. The standard price includes the design of one model and 3 revisions. We can also provide further revisions if necessary and this issue should be raised at the negotiation stage.
Can we manage our website support independently?
Yes, you can. All of our websites employ the best content management systems and can be maintained with rudimentary technical knowledge and skills. However, we strongly recommend that you allow us to handle technical support issues as this is the only way we can guarantee 100% performance from your site. In our experience, clients often forget to pay for hosting and their domain so their website can be permanently lost.
What technology do you use for website development?
Models: xHTML, XML, XSL.
Animation: Flash, ActionScript, AJAX, jQuery UI, JavaScript.
Databases: MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQLite, PostgreSQL.
CMS: Bitrix, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Amiro, Frog, Kentico, AxCMS, Sitefinity.
Programming: PHP, ASP, C#, ASP.NET, ASP.NET+MVC, Python, Django, Ruby.
Payment Systems: PayPal, MoneyBookers, Assist, OSMP, SMS.