Web 2.0 Re-examined: the Paradigm Shift, Technology Stack and Business Value
Web 2.0: The Paradigm Shifts
Web 2.0 refers to the 2nd generation web that is driven by two paradigm shifts from the first generation web:
- A usage paradigm shift
- A technology paradigm shift
Architecture of Participation: A Usage Paradigm Shift
The usage paradigm shift is the most obvious aspect of web 2.0 as seen from various consumer websites like MySpace, YouTube and Flickr. The characteristics have been very well articulated by Tim O’Reilly, Dion HinchCliffe and Jeremy Geelan, etc:
- Architecture of participation
- The network effect via social networking
- Harnessing the collective intelligence
Architecture of Partition: A Technology Paradigm Shift
Over the history of computing, computing architecture partition has been swinging back and forth between two extremes: server-centric or client centric architecture. We started with mainframe computing, which is a highly centralized model. In the mainframe era, computing happens on the server side and the client is a dumb display terminal. The next paradigm is client/server computing, where most of the computing happens on the client side. During web 1.0, we went back to a model similar to mainframe, where all the processing happens on the server side and the client side is simply a browser for displaying HTML pages.
The truth of the matter is that neither server centric nor client centric architecture is always appropriate. Unfortunately developers never had the flexibility to deciding the right architectural partition for their applications. Web 2.0 brings architectural partition flexibility to developers for the first time in history. With web 2.0, developers can partition the application in a way that is best appropriate for the application, rather than trying to fit into a pre-determined architecture. Some applications are best served by leaving only user interface and some UI logic on the client side. Some applications require all UI logic on the client side to deliver optimal result. For even more sophisticated applications, there is requirement to have a certain business logic and data on the client side as well. Web 2.0 technologies enable developers to decide how much computation stays on the client side and how much stays on the server side, delivering optimal results.
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