Web Application Development: The Ultimate Guide to Web Application Architecture
Web application architecture is an important topic when it comes to user engagement. Web application architecture allows developers to design web application development services that meet the basic and advanced needs of visitors. Criteria can range from fast loading to simple navigation.
The web application industry, according to Gartner, is a dynamic environment that incorporates new technology and raises security standards.
An important goal for any business is to avoid paying a lot of money to develop an app. To do so, you first need to understand what constitutes a good architecture. Will you be working on a web app development project? Is your architecture future-proof? Is it scalable and sustainable in the market? And how do you decide which components and functionalities to include in a web app? Choosing the right types can help you succeed, whether for your own web project or for a client.
What is web application architecture?
A model of simultaneous interactions between components, databases, middleware systems, user interfaces, and servers in a web application is known as web application architecture. It is also known as the design that logically specifies the link between the server and the client for a better web experience.
Importance of web application architecture
Market trends change over time, customer expectations change, and a company's growth never ends. Your enterprise application will fall into the huge ball of architectural anti-pattern mud if you don't have an architecture for your web application.
A well-designed web application architecture can handle a variety of loads and adapt to changing business requirements with ease, resulting in a fast user experience that further increases the application performance. It can also tackle multiple development tasks at once by breaking the structure into smaller modules, which will reduce the development time. Also, integrating new functionalities without altering the overall framework becomes easy.
To ensure customer satisfaction
From a user experience perspective, it is essential to invest in the architecture of the web application or in a complete plan for its operation.
It is a vital element of any web application design because it ensures that its design is efficient and scalable, meaning it will work in a variety of situations and avoid downtime. Otherwise, enterprise applications will irritate users with various issues and prevent them from collaborating with them.
To achieve the desired business results
The ideal web application architecture can save your business time and money in the long run by ensuring your website runs at peak capacity and without issues.
Web application architecture, for example, enables web developers to create websites that scale well as traffic grows, as well as features such as offline access (e.g., Google Docs), which are becoming necessities and specific to today's users.
Better application performance
A robust web application architecture provides a high degree of flexibility, which refers to the application's ability to react to changing market conditions and user needs.
The overall structural view allows developers to work on an application in multiple modules and introduce new features without disrupting the functionality of the web application.
Improved App Security
Modern web application architecture secures each of its structural pieces individually by thinking of a web application as a system of numerous blocks.
As a result, overall security is improved, allowing the software to withstand all common security threats, such as malicious attacks. Adding new elements will not jeopardize the achieved security level due to the robust structure.
How does web application architecture work?
Consider two separate programs (code buckets) running in parallel in a web application:
Client-side code
The front-end code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) that responds to user input and generates the visual representation (user interface or UI).
Backend code/Server-side code
Back-end or server-side code does two things: one is responding to HTTP requests and returning those responses back to the client, and the other is storing all kinds of data. It can be written in many languages, like C#, Java, Python, Ruby, Node.js, and PHP.
Web application developers (or architects) must decide what the code on the front-end and back-end should do in relation to each other. However, these “code” decisions are very high-level (what happens and where). Making decisions at the code level is part of software design, not web application architecture design.
Presentation layer
The user-centric presentation layer is what the user sees and interacts with. The presentation layer, often referred to as the client-side, contains the specific user interface (UI) required for the display in question, as well as the logic responsible for browser communication and any code needed to support user interaction.
Business layer
The business layer represents the application logic, retrieves data from the persistence layer, and processes requests back to the presentation layer according to business rules; this data exchange layer is also known as the “logic layer” or “application layer” for this reason.
Persistence layer
Another logical layer is the persistence layer, however, this only deals with accessing, writing, or changing the database. The persistence layer, like the other layers, can be called the data access layer.
Database layer
The database layer, such as SQL Server or MongoDB, is where all data is stored in the database. Changes in one layer do not affect other layers in a layered architecture, which eliminates interdependencies and results in more resilient software. On the other hand, including layers in a basic application could increase coding needs and result in a more monolithic product.
Web Application Architecture Models
These aforementioned components are built using a variety of models. Logica7web strongly believes in selecting the appropriate model to best meet your business needs while maintaining high application performance. Our developers are experts in determining the optimal architectural model for the type of web application you want to build. Let's take a look at all the possible options:
Single Page Application Architecture
Only relevant content is displayed in this web application architecture. To achieve this, it first loads the necessary web page and then dynamically updates the rendering of its content with only the requested data.
In other words, it does not demand the server to load any extra pages; it simply demands those portions of a webpage from the server that are required.
Single-page applications improve efficiency and make the UI more intuitive.
Microservices Architecture
Basically, a microservices architecture is a breaking down of the web application into several smaller, independent pieces, which are developed independently to have the overall build of the application.
This framework allows developers to increase their productivity while streamlining and speeding up the development process. Moreover, this framework can be built in a variety of programming languages.
Microservices architecture has gained popularity in recent years as a result of its flexibility and reliability, and companies like Amazon, eBay, and Netflix have adopted it for their complex needs.
Serverless Architecture
To host a web application, developers collaborate with third-party service providers and cloud infrastructure services using a serverless architecture. This architecture eliminates the need to manage infrastructure, which is perhaps the most difficult task in the web application development services process. All you have to do with serverless architecture is focus on functional development.
Working on small functionalities in applications is possible with this type of web application architecture. Amazon and Microsoft, for example, are two service providers that help with server administration.
Progressive Web App
Since 2019, Progressive Web Apps have been one of the most promising web app innovations, providing a convenient and effective user experience that can be accessed from any browser and device via a shared URL.
Progressive web apps are used in a variety of industries, including entertainment, finance, and e-commerce. Lightweight, cost-effective, cross-device compatibility, the ability to attract online traffic, and a fully functional app experience are just a few of their key advantages.