Question

What is the best way for loading data into different modules like iGoogle? I have three ideas, but which one is preferred?

1. Generate the html page dynamical with the lastest data from the database.
2. Serve a almost static html page, then the client fetch the data from a api with JavaScript
3. Serve a almost static html page, then the client connects to a websocket which will provide the client with history data from the db before pushing the live-steams.

After one of these three cases the client connects (of course the third alternative will never disconnect) to a websocket which pushes live data.

Which alternative is the most preferred (fastest, most lightweight) and uses the techniques in the way they where meant? I have a feeling that the third alternative uses websockets in a wrong way?

My conclusion after some research and thinking;

Number 1:

• Can be used even if JavaScript is turned off
• We need to serve a dynamical page, with disk io

Number 2:

• Serves a fast html page
• Maximal number of connections (html page, api, websocket)

Number 3:

• Serves a fast html page
• We have minimal number of connections, since we will connect to the websockets even if the data is fetched before (html page, websocket)

Answer 1

If performance (and latency in particular) is important to you, going with solution 3 seems perfectly okay. Number 1 is nice for graceful degradation (as you’ve already noticed yourself), and perhaps number 2 is het most conceptually clean, but I think all solutions are fine.