Rich Internet Application Technology

Rich Internet applications provide an end user with an interface that is more responsive than traditional applications. The user's browser does not exchange large, monolithic blocks of information, but rather sends small pieces of data at a time, usually asynchronously. And this means that only relevant pieces of the interface need to updated, allowing users to do more, and do it more quickly, than traditional web applications allow. For this reason, more and more web applications use rich Internet technology of some type to give the end user an optimal experience.

Implementation of Ajax RIA can enhance value of service oriented systems. Open source developers can combine and leverage the powerful capabilities of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) with Rich Internet Applications technology. Developers can use many available free components, flexibility to use layouts, data management tools. Traditional RIA followed client-server architecture and client is used to display static content where as all real processing is carried on the server. Server is the channel through which client instructions are executed only by receiving response from the server. These drawbacks lead to revamping and current RIA has proved.

Even web developers that are comfortable with AJAX or Flex (or other frameworks used for creating rich Internet applications) will soon need to immerse themselves in Microsoft Silverlight, while new developers will want to learn about Microsoft Silverlight from the start. Because of its foundation with .NET, Microsoft Silverlight has a smaller learning curve than many other frameworks used to create rich Internet applications.

Client engine provides several benefits to enjoy: rich user interface; more responsive as client engine is downloaded on the client side at the beginning itself. Other performance benefits include: client server balance, workload on the web server is reduced, and resources set free are assigned other client sessions simultaneously. Prefetching and asynchronous communication speeds up the response time. This helps RIA users to move data between the client and server easily. e.g. Google Maps. Network load is reduced as client engine is application specific and before downloading data.

We know that in a general each web page requires an individual download using HTTP GET request. But, RIA uses asynchronous communication for more responsive user interface bypassing web page paradigm of downloading the web pages. This makes difficult to measure the response time and reduces the packet sniffing approach. RIA is java script enabled and uses XMLHTTPRequest for client-server communication, DOM scripting and latest CSS for rich user interface. Some products provide environment for development.