Government Technology

Future-Proofing Applications


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April 23, 2009 By

In the halcyon days of glass rooms and mainframes, application development was a logical, step-by-step, paced process. It involved careful specification of everything from the database to input screens. Many of us can remember the shelves full of binders containing detailed specs covering everything related to an application -- the planning alone might occur over a period of months or even years.

Application development followed a logical, sensible course. Projects started, they were planned, laid out carefully, built and deployed in a nice, relatively neat linear progression that at least from the viewpoint of the end users took a long time.

All this orderliness encountered the ultimate apple cart upsetters: cheaper computers in the hands of pesky and impatient end users. And, if that wasn't bad enough, the Web arrived which somehow seemed to turn anyone with access to a keyboard and an ability to type into "developers."

Although the Web became -- and still is to a large extent -- a wild west, the fact remains that building good, solid, enterprise-worthy applications depend on many of the solid principles that ruled the glass rooms.

But, even when sound development principles are in use, things still need to move at Internet speed and flexibility is far more important than it used to be. As computing power increased and Web application development matured, some interesting approaches have emerged to reconcile the need for well-planned applications and the flexibility required to survive in the rapidly changing world of the Web.


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