Re-Tooling for Web 3.0

While developing a relatively simple scriptaculous application, it struck me that web 3.0 is on the way - and it's not too far.

Applications like Remedy, Business Objects, and other workflow centric environments can be mirrored with simple HTML, a little bit of javascript, and the standard LAMP architecture. I've always been wary of web interfaces that require java because simply making something with Java does not necessarily mean that it is cross-platform. In fact making something with Java doesn't even mean that it's going to be supported with the next major Java revision.

If you want to support java with an enterprise application, put together a middle-tier to integrate with a workflow engine, and include a windows-ish interface, you end up with scalability and security issues right out of the box. Not to mention the fact that you end up needing a staff with an incredible set of knowledge in order to maintain performance, security, and the never ending queue of enhancement requests.

So why not build all of this using LAMP? It hasn't been done up to this point because cross-browser/cross-platform javascript knowledge has been rather sparse. Add to that a serious underappreciation for the power of web services and AJAX among corporate powerhouses. I mean, how many years did we hear the buzz that XML is the way of the future, but nobody seemed to have any idea what to do with XML in the first place.

It really has just been an extended growth period - perhaps lengthened by the dot-com crash at the turn of the century. But web 3.0 is on the way, and with it will follow the long predicted set of cheap PCs with just enough power to run a web browser and a modicum of local file storage.

Another on point subject is the fact that MySQL receives a good deal of criticism for not supporting some "real" database features such as transactions. In the enterprise world, so many applications treat the back end database platform as nothing more than a storage engine. Lack of transactional support is actually a performance enhancing feature using this architecture.