Question

OK, I realize that people don’t like to install stuff on their PCs if they don’t have to and that is the primary advantage of web apps over “desktop” that run locally.

But for corporate internal applications where security is not an issue, if an application is such that its user base has the app up 100% of the time, using it exclusively as their primary tool, wouldn’t a desktop app be a better choice?

I don’t have any experience/know much about WPF web applications, but my impression is that it is essentially an application that is running locally on your Windows PC. I am more familiar with what is probably older technology, WinForms, specifically, deploying a WinForm app via ClickOnce technology.

It seems to me that Click-Once (and presumably WPF Web Apps) have, for practical purposes, solved the dll hell deployment issues of the past, yet it seems to me that the appeal of using Web apps internally was to avoid the dll hell associated with local installations. Yet, with this problem solved, why do companies still avoid/fear apps that involve local installation and gravitate so quickly to web apps?

It seems to me that the advantages of desktop apps are

1) COST – Desktop apps are just conceptually simpler because you have the full resources of the local machine and you have state. As a result, desktop apps GOT TO BE much cheaper to develop for the same functionality. Just look at all the complicated client side/server sided Ajax fancy code one has to go through to do things that would be trivial in a desktop app. I picture people disputing this point but to me it is obvious and beyond debate.

2) Desktop apps are typically richer. Web apps are at best comparable at the expense of more complicated / more expensive to develop code. (a corrolary to 1)

I can list more, but these should be enough…

Obviously desktop apps wouldn’t be appropriate for all internal web sites. But take this as an example and tell me if you think a web deployed desktop app is the better choice:

A Help Desk application used 8 hours/day every day by the users and is the only app running on their PCs. Furthermore, application is patched seldom.

My feeling is that people get in a rut and once they know something (eg, web apps) it is the solution for everything. What do you say?

Edit #1: Here’s an example of a Click Once desktop app (an integrated front end for Rational Clearquest/Sharepoint/PVCS/Mercury for managing problem tickets) that takes advantage of the computer power of the client to store information locally and let the user slice and dice the data in different ways w/o hitting the server each time while still allowing the user to link real time to the live data to update individual records. It’s kind of like a spreadsheet download that maintains links to server data should the user want to perform an update.

Sure you can imitate this functionality on the web but I think that the the dev effort would be much greater and you wouldn’t get this type of responsiveness which would be important to a user that spends a lot of time in the app.

Answer 1

Why are web apps prevalent for internal corporate apps?

Primarily because the centralized deployment model of web application solved the deployment nightmare of old fat client applications (machine specs, available libraries, drivers, etc). I’ve seen companies where, when they were done with the deployment, the last machine installed was already two version ahead the first one. With a browser on the client side (i.e. a cross-platform execution environment) and centralized deployment, you just wipe out these problems. Welcome to the thin client era.

Now, I’m not convinced that desktop application are typically cheaper (I don’t know if the development is cheaper but I’m sure maintenance, support,… are not).

I however agree that Desktop applications are typically richer. Regardless of what people will claim, this was not arguable before the AJAX advent and this still applies in some specific areas where a browser is just not appropriate, with or without AJAX (ask a trader to use a browser and you’ll see). Some people do not want a page flow paradigm, some people do need advanced widgets (e.g. a grid component with advanced filtering, grouping, Excel like features like basic formulas, etc), or low latency, or real time, etc i.e. things that a Rich Internet Application – or RIA – is not really made for and is thus not the right tool to choose!

And I agree too that technologies like Java WebStart or Microsoft ClickOnce do solve the old deployment problem and allow the development of so called Rich Desktop Applications – or RDA – (rich desktop UI on the client, business on the server, standard protocol between them and centralized deployment, so still a thin client) which seems to be an excellent compromise (better user experience but without headache).

So why do people systematically omit the RDA option? Well, I believe that:

1. We (IT professionals) have taught people how to create internet applications so they just (re)do it.
2. It’s already complicated enough to explain Internet, thin client, AJAX, RIA, etc and there is not much evangelism on RDA. So most people just don’t know what RDA are.
3. We (IT professionals) constantly say something and its contrary: don’t use a fat client, it sucks, use a thin client, it rules, don’t use javascript, it sucks (pre AJAX era), use javascript, it rules (post AJAX era), don’t use a thin client(!), it sucks, use rich desktop application, it rules and so on. Even if there is logic in this, this makes some concepts (like RDA) hard to sell to non techies at the end.
4. People don’t forget bad experiences that easily (fat client) even if things have changed since then.
5. People actually don’t really need RDA in let’s say 95% of the situations.
6. There are more RIA developers than RDA developers.

So it’s our (we, IT professionals) fault 🙂