What is a web application?

Simply, there are two kinds of Web sites, those that behave like magazines, places where you read stuff; and sites that behave like software, places where you go to do stuff.

Examples of magazines include the NY Times and Newsweek sites, Weblogs like Robot Wisdom, Evhead and Scripting News, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Fast Company and the Van Gogh Museum. These are published sites, created by writers, designers and graphics people.

Examples of applications include Yahoo's calendar, Hotmail's email tools, Register.com's registration page. These are software tools and utilities that run on a server and interface through a Web browser like MSIE and Netscape. The people who create Web applications are programmers and user interface designers, experts in creating software. There is some overlap between magazine and application designers. There are words and graphics in software, but the design job is different when the user's words, pictures and data are in the design too. It's more complicated.

The Phases in a Web Application Project are:-

The Web application development process has 4 phases:

Envisioning the nature and direction of the project

In this phase, the management and developers assigned to the project come together and establish the goals that the solution must achieve. This includes recognizing the limitations that are placed on the project, scheduling, and versioning of the application. By the end of this phase, there should be clear documentation on what the application will achieve.

Devising the plan

 In this phase, you and your team must determine the "how's" of the application.

What scripting language is most appropriate, which features must be included, and how long will it take? These are some of the questions that must be answered through this planning phase. The main tangents at this point are the project plan and functional specification. The project plan determines a timeframe of events and tasks, while the functional specification outlines in detail how the application will function and flow.

Development

Once the project plan and functional specification are ready, a baseline is set for the development work to begin. The programmer/s or Web developer/s begin coding, testing and publishing data. This phase establishes the data variables, entities and coding procedures that will be used throughout the remainder of the project. A milestone document is prepared by the development team, which is then handed to management for review.

Testing, support and stability

The stability phase of the application project mainly focuses on testing and the removal of bugs, discrepancies and network issues that may otherwise cause the application to fail. It is here that policies and procedures are established for a successful support system.

Web applications will be around for a long time to come. As we move further on into the future, they will become less manual and more automated.