RIA Development

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications. RIA's typically transfer the processing necessary for the user interface to the web client but keep the bulk of the data (i.e. maintaining the state of the program, the data etc) back on the application server.

 

• run in a web browser, or do not require software installation;
• run locally in a secure environment called a sandbox;
• can be "occasionally connected" wandering in and out of hot-spots or from office to office.

RIA Benefits

Because RIAs take advantage of the client's CPU, they offer real-time user-interface options that are not possible with the standard HTML widgets available to browser-based Web applications. This richer functionality may include anything that can be implemented in the system being used on the client side (see below), including "drag and drop," using a slider to change data, calculations that happen on the client (e.g., an insurance rate calculator) and do not need to be sent back to the server, etc. High interactivity of RIA applications (when compared to standard web applications) may approach that of fat clients.

• The computing resources of both client and server are more balanced, so the server need not be the workhorse that it is with a web application. This frees server resources and allows the same hardware to handle more sessions concurrently.
• The network traffic may also be significantly reduced because the client can be more intelligent (e.g. application specific optimization) than a web browser in determining what it needs to send back and forth to the server. Thus, it takes less time to transfer any single request or response because of two reasons - they are smaller and overall network load is lower.

Our RIA Expertise

• Adobe Flex;
• Aswing;
• AJAX (WAML, Backbase, JQuery, YUI, etc);
• Adobe Flash;
• Adobe AIR;