How to choose a technology for a Web Application

With internet celebrating its silver anniversary, I must say we have really come a long way in a short span of time.  Many technologies and platforms have evolved. Cherry picking web application, this particular area has seen maximum evolution . We have an outburst of several web pages that kept challenging of something new. Many technologies entered scene, got noticed and made a niche into the web industry.

With a basket full of technologies available the trick today lies in searching the best among them for you. Before delving in how you actually decide which is best suited to you, I wish to put a quick light upon the two bifurcations that come our way in web technologies.

1. Language bound

It is a basic framework that runs on server side or client browser. There is no concise solution for which these technologies are used. RoR, Django, are to name a few.

2. Platform bound

This set of technologies track us towards particular solution rather on open framework. So they could be called solution based technologies such as Magneto, WordPress etc.

But the main question arises that actually why do we need to really think so much before going for a particular technology? Why is there so much hype about it?

1. The biggest part in any project is cost to develop it. If you spend a hill over it and cannot still not get even an ounce of return on it then I advise its time you pack your bags.
2. Secondly when you are aware of the intricate details of the project and the way to go about achieving it, then you are having the best bird’s view of the estimate, time to market and expected return value.
3. With lesser efforts in adding more of code would improve its quality to a better level. The increase in the lines of punching code is directly proportional to the bugs that you would encounter. So if you like to please your QA efforts stay calm and decide the technology beforehand.

So by now you do get the feeling of how much deciding a technology plays a vital role in the overall success of any web application product. Here are a few tips that would go handy to select the best technology suitable.

1. The first thing is to understand the requirements that would make up the entire goal to be accomplished. Understanding what you actually wish to achieve and what points are been a trouble in the past that you wish to overcome.
2. The next important part is actually bifurcating which among the gist of requirements actually make the core ones camouflaging the business traits. Sometimes there are vague chunks that we need to divide into complex and smaller modules.
3. Based on these requirements get the core to abstract form to divulge your solution aim. Based on the aim you could just hit bull’s eye
   1. If your requirements trail towards product transaction or anything which is market oriented then it is pointing to E Commerce project
   2. The requirements focusing on content is reflecting the importance of content delivery.
   3. If you have lot of search system requirement be it in any domain, then the search engine related application should pop up.
   4. For all the rest that compass the data processing or computational need are having a variation in the components that make them. For these the generic or basic framework mostly works fine.
   5. Research research and research! The best way to know actually which technology goes well with your application’s demands is plausible if you do your homework well. You need to find the tools that will help you to check if your needs are handled using plugins and extensions that are available.
   6. Care to be taken to see that you should halt when you realize that the complexity and cost to implement your all the requirements is going overboard. In that case it is better if you go for looking out for other choice that is though lesser than the ideal one but still helps to hold everything in place.

Now let’s focus on some technologies that are widely dug into creating such applications

• PHP

Well a scripting language that made up of projects like WordPress, Joomla, Magento and Drupal. So if your project delves into these go for PHP. Faster processing speed, stability with fair amount of documentation and larger set of hosting sites and faithful developers it is amicably the safest choice for let’s say you are building a very simple application with negligent database access. So you have its wide range of frameworks to choose from to contemplate what actually goes on under covers. So for the entire hassle free and light framework with minimum amount of code and variety of plugins this could be a good choice. It is up to you to either use them or create a new one based on feature requirement without actually feeling like using some heavy framework.

• Ruby on Rails

Computing and interactive web applications with requirement of stronger backend get better with RoR. It helps you resolve many architectural problems like building initial script, testing, logging, database setup, application configuration and application life cycle so that you focus your entire attention on how to work your arm on solving the problem and working on the prototype. The smart and much stronger design paradigms help to boast and fire the application in no time. Made up with real world use cases this is preferred when language envelopes the idea completely with ease of scaling and manipulation.

• Python with Django

This web framework establishes a biased convention for web programming. Devoid of slow, out-of-touch, and expensive enterprise solutions, this framework works best. It is similar to Ruby in terms of advantages as well as disadvantages, however it is found solace in various academic and research related web applications owing to its maturity in the programming purists. Python world seems to produce more exceptionally well-written modules. With better support for scientific libraries, readability and maintainability Python may seem complex sometimes but it will never be complicated.

• Node.js

Capable to develop server-side applications through JavaScript, its usage are effectively used in places where inter communication and message passing form primal need. So wherever the quick and on time updates are required and other real-time notifications Node.js tops the polls. Armed with JavaScript and having the client side and server side code written in the same language creates convenience for writing interactive websites with great response time. Advantages also include Javascript environment for front end i.e. Angularjs development.

Ease to maintain, hassle free setup, good development support and ease in scalability would also be the keen points that you do look into. These are just a few tit bits that you could consider while you choose a technology. Finally it is not which is the best among all, it is which among all is the best for you right?