Apple WebObjects 5 - Manual (Page 71)

C H A P T E R 6
WebObjects Desktop Applications
Two Approaches to Java Client 71
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Apple Computer, Inc. January 2002
■ Client-side processing: Web applications do the majority of their processing on
the server, while Java Client moves much of an application’s processing to the
client. This reduces the amount of client-server communication considerably,
making Java Client applications much snappier than their Web counterparts.
■ User experience: These criteria all affect user experience in some way. If your
application demands a rich user interface, the manipulation of complex data,
and long sessions, Java Client is an excellent choice.
Two Approaches to Java Client
For both HTML and Java Client applications, WebObjects offers rapid development
environments that are useful both for prototyping applications and for building
full-featured, usable applications. The Java Client rapid development environment
is called Direct to Java Client.
Direct to Java Client and non-direct Java Client are very similar in that they use the
Enterprise Objects technology the same way to access data stores. They only differ
at the user interface level.
Think of the relationship this way: a Java Client application is a completely
customized Direct to Java Client application. Whereas the user interface in Direct to
Java Client applications is generated dynamically at run time, the user interface in
Java Client applications is built by hand.
If you need the precise user interface customization that the non-direct approach
allows, it’s much easier to integrate a custom interface file in a Direct to Java Client
application than to develop a completely custom Java Client application (though
this is possible and supported). That way, you get the best of both worlds: the
advantages of Direct to Java Client and the advantages of custom interfaces built
with the non-direct approach.
The primary advantage of Direct to Java Client is that its not necessary to write
source code to generate or manage an application’s user interface. This allows you
to focus on writing business logic instead. Although the direct approach lets you
manage user interfaces without writing much source code, the approach offers a
number of mechanisms to customize user interfaces:
■ Java Client Assistant