> I agree with everything you said except the point about the GWT.
> Using a framework like this you can have your query in the javascript,
> and pass it through directly the database and pass the data back using
> extremely simple (think 10 line) php or perl rpc that renders query
> result back in json to the browser. In fact, you can write, compile,
> and debug the app in java which is great advantage of gwt (imo). Of
> course, this is not an appropriate way of writing an application over
> untrusted network but otoh, is....very RAD.
"Untrusted" is the key point here... in most of the real world cases you
will be far away from such trust that you would run SQL coming from the
end users browser...
> What you get is the limitation of working through the browser but you
> can kiss goodbye to deployment headaches that plague classic thick
> client apps because the runtime is 100% contained in the browser
> rendering engine and some mighty .js files.
And this draws the next problem, in the moment your .js is too "mighty",
the users will come screaming after you once their browser starts to
regularly crash, drive the client box out of memory, bog it down to a
halt, etc.
There's no way you can replace all the functionality of a middleware
layer, but it's certainly true some cleverness can be placed at the
client side. Google mail is a very good example, I love that kind of
interface...
Cheers,
Csaba.