On 1/15/08, Walden H. Leverich <WaldenL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Anything an ERP-like system is doing should be doable via a browser,
especially if you dictate choice of browser, but even if you don't. I'm
curious where you're gaining from a thick client.
Ah well. This is a whole another topic.
I think the key is integration. Web application tend to either not
integrate well, or have very specific requirements for integrating
well (Sharepoint, i'm looking at you).
An ERP software needs to interoperate with the Application to user
uses. Suppose you're working through your purchase order, and decide
to send the client a letter. You can right lick it, and Word opens up,
prefilling all the necessary information.
This is easy to do with a Thick Client. With a web browser, you'll
have to start creating custom ActiveX Controls (like Sharepoint), and
then deal with the Security Fallout that might result from that
(Sharepoint needs to be in the Intranet Zone to work properly).
Response time is another issue. Assume you're trying to find
something, sorting rows, changing how they're displayed etc. Web
browsers have moved forward in this respect in the past few years, but
they still don't beat a local table control on the client.
There is also much more possibility to help the user with a Thick
Client. Type ahead finding is now a Standard Web 2.0 feature, but when
we started out this was in 2001. In the end, a Thicker Client was the
only way to get a well integrated application.
Our software is not really thick client, though. More like a
proprietary thin client - a graphical 5250 essentially. The client can
do a few value checks and send messages to other programs, but all the
Business logic runs on the server, and the server tells the client
what to draw on the screen (In the Sense of "A 20 char field named
Blah", and not "Draw 20 pixels black bar from a to b").
midrange.com
