Re: Front-end Driven Applications

I returned and reread the article with a more opened mind. I gained a
greater appreciation for a few of the ideas presented, and an understanding
of why the need for yet another acronym.

The author has a valid point that new applications may be developed which
may concurrently connect to to any number of back-end web service
providers, anywhere on the Internet.

The idea of connecting to any number of back-end servers anywhere on the
Internet distinguishes this type of development from traditional
fat-clients, and mainstream browser clients (which range from very thin to
moderately rich), but which are pretty-much hosted by a single back-end
server.

The thing that doesn't make sense is his qualification about using Web
sockets. The thing that really distinguishes Web sockets from AJAX is that
servers can "push" content to the client without the client requesting it.
Web sockets support feeder-reader use cases, which puts the server in the
driver seat, feeding content to clients based on events occurring on
servers.

So if you want to create a client that connects to and requests resources
from many back-end service providers, then use AJAX to make requests of
sites which expose Restful web service APIs.

Given that caveat, I would suggest that yes, we can expect to see more FDAs.

Nathan.