Leverage JNLP and SOAP for Java Thick-client Development
Although Java never quite lived up to its early promise of thick-client computing on the Web, intranets can benefit from the capabilities the JNLP protocol affords—especially when combined with the SOAP protocol.
by Allan Peda
November 22, 2004
he hype during the mid-to-late 1990's over Java's utility to run swarms of autonomous applets was greatly exaggerated. This early enthusiasm (and marketing) for Java as a language with which developers could develop cross-platform applets was doubly unfortunate. Not only did it fail to deliver the applets promise because of weaknesses in the platform's technology, but these failures also shifted Java development away from applet-rich "thick" clients and toward server-centric, thin-client solutions, even in relatively homogenous intranet environments. Developers seemed to forget the fact that because Java is very portable across multiple platforms it is very suitable for developing distributed thick clients.
Today, in addition to client portability considerations, the need for platform-independent protocols is growing. The increasing use of XML-based technologies such as SOAP allows the developer to concentrate on the representation of data without worrying as much about the underlying hardware or network. Additionally, the text-based nature of XML-based protocols allows simpler debugging, although this comes with a speed tradeoff.
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he hype during the mid-to-late 1990's over Java's utility to run swarms of autonomous applets was greatly exaggerated. This early enthusiasm (and marketing) for Java as a language with which developers could develop cross-platform applets was doubly unfortunate. Not only did it fail to deliver the applets promise because of weaknesses in the platform's technology, but these failures also shifted Java development away from applet-rich "thick" clients and toward server-centric, thin-client solutions, even in relatively homogenous intranet environments. Developers seemed to forget the fact that because Java is very portable across multiple platforms it is very suitable for developing distributed thick clients.
