This is a client project, and the client has professed a strong desire to build additional applications working with the domain data, and possibly even to migrate the UI portion of whatever we build to a different web application platform that plays nicely with their existing management tool chain.
This suggested building a simple RESTful domain logic server that will support the development of independent applications, and a separate application server that can be deprecated if need be. The client's IT team are comfortable with Javascript, so we decided to build the application side in Javascript. One choice was node.js, another was to push the UI down into the browser.
As it happens, there is no requirement for more UX than a web application would deliver, so we are essentially delivering the "application server" inside the browser. We can obviously do a lot in the browser that can't be done with an application server, but we want to be 100% sure that they can port the application interface to a web platform if they wish.
Thus, the cargo cult mentality of making a JS app that works just like a web app. We're building it specifically to be understood by a programmer with web development experience.
Our genuine hope is that making it easy to port back to an application server will also make it easy for the client to extend and modify just the way it is. If integration with something like backbone is easy, they might just find themselves adding the kind of functionality you espouse on their own.
This suggested building a simple RESTful domain logic server that will support the development of independent applications, and a separate application server that can be deprecated if need be. The client's IT team are comfortable with Javascript, so we decided to build the application side in Javascript. One choice was node.js, another was to push the UI down into the browser.
As it happens, there is no requirement for more UX than a web application would deliver, so we are essentially delivering the "application server" inside the browser. We can obviously do a lot in the browser that can't be done with an application server, but we want to be 100% sure that they can port the application interface to a web platform if they wish.
Thus, the cargo cult mentality of making a JS app that works just like a web app. We're building it specifically to be understood by a programmer with web development experience.
Our genuine hope is that making it easy to port back to an application server will also make it easy for the client to extend and modify just the way it is. If integration with something like backbone is easy, they might just find themselves adding the kind of functionality you espouse on their own.