Nathan,
Single page apps appeal to me because they shift the web application from the server to the client. Instead of having a traditional web application running on the server side (e.g., a .NET web application running in IIS, a Java web application running in WebSphere, a PHP web application running in the Zend web server), the web application runs in the client using JavaScript, a JavaScript framework such as Angular, and the browser.
However, there are times when an SPA might not be the best approach. Here's a blog article that I thought was helpful in understanding why someone would not want to use an SPA:
https://blog.svpino.com/2014/10/15/is-a-single-page-application-what-you-really-need
For developing GUI interfaces instead of 5250 green screens, SPAs seem like a solid approach.
Thanks,
Kelly
-----Original Message-----
From: WEB400 [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nathan Andelin
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2015 3:12 PM
To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
Subject: [WEB400] Single Page Applications
Probably a poor choice to start a topic that has such far reaching impact as this, on a Friday afternoon. Maybe we can pick it up on Monday.
This is a natural extension of the discussion this past week about which server architecture might be best to support single page applications, or SPA's.
I'll begin by asking, what is a single page application? Popular terms like SPA tend to get hijacked by anyone interested in promoting a product.
Based on my readings, SPAs are essentially static content (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), which have UI components which adapt to "data", which may be downloaded after the static content.
SPAs are said to be "responsive" in that pages are not "refreshed"; just page elements which adapt visually as data is refreshed asynchronously over the life cycle of the application.
Much of the promotion of SPAs seems to originate from frameworks like Angular and Bootstrap, which supplement HTML with "declarative elements"
such as <tags> and <tag attributes> which are bound to JavaScript and CSS libraries.
SPAs have far reaching implications in that traditional server-based frameworks and tools which are designed to generate HTML, manage sessions, and provide gateways to data appear to be superfluous; perhaps obsolete.
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