Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum : RE: Thick Client vs Web Client

The real question is what do you want to do with the app. I would argue that apps that need large amounts of input, are mission critical, or need security would call for a Notes client.

For large apps that are used internally, I have always favored nonbrowser clients. The browser approach relies on html basically, and has to be supplemented with java. I do not believe this is a good approach when your target user is internal to an organization. A client like Notes has many built in features that are hard to duplicate in a web browser environment. Having said that I am sure someone is going to come back and say they can do anything with html and java, or some other language, that I can do. That is not completely accurate. Yes they can make a browser do all of the functions, but one.

A browser with java or whatever can never be made as keyboard efficient as a regular client, or at least not be made so with limited time and money. This is true of Notes vs. a browser or any other client vs. a browser. Html is the limiting factor. It was never designed for a typing intensive environment. Thus you can never deliver a browser based app that is as efficient for an input operator.

On a different note, I always love the idea that browsers are free. Yes, I got my browser free with my computer and operating system. Now let me add up the hours spent downloading patches, upgrades, and fixing problems these have caused plus add up the hours debugging or removing problems caused by third party spyware, add in's and other software. Let's see, free browser + a billion man-hours supporting my browser times whatever my time is worth = lots of down time and lost revenue.

The Notes client is very cheap to buy and support. It is easy to support and easy to upgrade and to fix. I have probably spent as much time supporting my Notes client in the last 10 years as I have spent any given 3 month period on keeping my browser running. I can guarantee you that if you are deploying an app in a large organization, the cost of keeping a browser up and running for mission critical computing functions is far greater than keeping the Notes client up.

That leads to a third consideration: security. Care to discuss browser security? An app written for the browser environment is inherently less secure than a Notes, or here we could say Domino app. I have yet to see a security alert that says something like, "Upgrade now. Hackers will use your running Notes client to take control of your workstation."

Or consider that no matter how hard a hacker tries, without an id file it is thought to be impossible to hack into an app that is based entirely on Domino and Notes with no browser or anonymous access. After all a web client uses in most cases a name and a password. Is that as secure as a Notes app that does not allow web access and has name, password, and id file security?

I seem to be agruing for Notes clients only apps. But I have to admit I do a lot of browser based apps. These are ones that do not need the security of Notes, are not input intensive, and are not mission critical.

By the way I also do some work with Visual FoxPro and a lot of these arguments hold true here also. A browser is just not as strong in some environments.

Hope this helps.

Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum

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