What are Web Apps
Web Applications are the applications that run on web browsers for retrieving data from remotely located web servers by interacting the content located on web pages within websites using web browsers. These applications are created using web browser supported software languages like Java Script, HTML and CSS.
Web Applications may be described as computer programs allowing website visitors to submit and retrieve data to and from a database server over the internet using their preferred web browser. This data is then presented to use within their web browser as information is generated dynamically by web applications through a web browser.
Historically Web Apps have been evolved from early days of server-client environment where load of application was shared between code on server and code installed on each client. Any upgrade at server side also required upgrade to client system as well, which resulted in decrease in productivity due to increase in support cost. In contrast, web applications use web documents written in a standard format such as HTML and JavaScript, which are supported by a variety of web browsers. Web applications can be considered as a specific variant of client-server software where the client software is downloaded to the client machine when visiting the relevant web page, using standard procedures such as HTTP. Client web software updates may happen each time the web page is visited. Thus, Web Apps have powerful capability of updating and maintaining web apps without having to disturb thousand of computers interlinked through internet which use those web apps.
The first interactive script controlled by browser, which were for browser client side without processing by the server, was introduced in 1995 by Netscape. In the same year first web-based program for Web 2.0, ViaWeb introduced for developing and storing servers at remote. Animations on the web pages were the result of Macromedia Flash player in form of vector animation in 1996. Cloud computing evolved in 1997. Amazon taking the first initiative and drove many other players like Google, IBM and many universities to take cloud computing into their research projects in 2008. This research resulted in “Eucalyptus” and an open source for companies interested in cloud for their own private projects.
Servlet Specification version 2.2 introduced web applications concept in java language although before that Java Script and XML had already been adapted. But Ajax had not yet been coined and the XML http request object had only been recently introduced on Internet Explorer 5 as an ActiveX object.
HTML5 finalized and included graphics and multimedia capabilities without requirement of client side plug-in in 2011.Based on same HTML5 canvas and java script language WebGL API paned the way for advanced 3D graphics. Web-based applications were not developed in the last ten years. The concept is an old one in terms of the computer and Internet history. The idea has always been to give the user power, performance and information beyond his own monitor’s ability to deliver it.[13][14]
How Web Apps Work:
Web applications query the content server and dynamically generate web documents requested by the clients. These documents are supported by all sorts of browsers like HTML or XHTML. Web Apps have powerful feature of performing their function irrespective of operating systems and browsers running on client side and can be deployed anywhere without any cost or installation requirements at user end.
Client can access the web server through internet by typing the website address in web browser. The request is forwarded through port 80 in IP packet over internet and reaches the intended web server located remotely for the client. Web Application server fetches the intended data from database server and manages the database to process data and interacts web server to send the requested data to desired client. Web application server is dynamic content generation technology tool such as JSP and ASP. While database server may contain data like, videos, news, credit card and customers personal data. In between the layers various protocols and libraries are being used to communicate. The web server usually connects to a database locally, often through sockets, or over a network between the computers. Web servers might interact with each other or with application servers through basic networking protocol like TCP/IP, or higher level protocols like RPC. Web servers communicate with web browsers using the HTTP protocol.[20]Future of Web Applications:
The great advantage of web applications of upgrading and updating without disturbing the software to every user, as each visitor to a web application gets the latest version immediately when requests a web page makes them future proof. Web applications are emerging into new horizons where do not normally need a server to store the information for example, word processor which stores documents on the computer and doesn't require a server. Web applications can provide the same functionality with the advantage of working across multiple platforms. For instance, a web application can act as a word processor, storing information and allowing to download the document onto a computer hard drive.
The Gmail or Yahoo mail clients have developed how sophisticated web applications just in the past few years. Much of that sophistication is because of AJAX, which is a programming model for creating more responsive web applications. Google Apps, Microsoft Office Live, and WebEx, WebOffice are examples of the newest generation of web applications.[13][18]
Web Applications in Health Sector
Jaoquin who is World Health Organization (WHO) member, defined E-Health in 2010 as use of ICT for health and its relevant areas including health care services, health supervision, health literature, self management education for health and its knowledge and research. He also said that E-health has the potential to greatly improve health service efficiency. It should expand or extend treatment delivery to more than thousands of patients in developing countries, and also improve patient results.
There are many advantages of electronic eHealth record facilitated to advance through web applications and internet. Surely there is a great potential in this field and research organizations around the world has much more emphasize than ever before to help people improve their health cost effectively. It will reduce the time and expanse of visiting the doctor.[19][21]
1)- Electronic Health Record:
It is the systematic collection of data relevant to patient or populations health stored in digital format and capable of sharing through web and digital communication to multiple places where doctors and medical staff can work on it. It contains all the medical history of patient in one file so that doctors can view to analyze and diagnose in much better way. Earlier doctors used to record patients data on piece of paper and errors or mistakes were quite general, but eHealth data storing is made simple accessible all the times by patient and doctor and less chances of mistakes. Doctors can now place orders electronically avoiding elucidation of hand written orders. Thus it reduces time of locating and reading patient health information. This also makes patient start becoming aware of their health conditions and be careful and adapt precautionary measures to fight diseases.[19]
EHRs can consist of data about medical history, demographics, immunization status, medication and allergies, radiology images, laboratory test results, vital signs, billing information and persona statistics like age and weight. There are several web based software application products available in the market today purely designed for facilitating EHR. Few of these are listed below:
2)- Telemedicine:
The concept of telemedicine involves ICT to provide clinical healthcare to patients at a distance. It helps treatment for rural and distant areas especially in emergency cases. It is also used to save lives in critical care and emergency situations.
Telemedicine is a vast field which includes many other subfields like emergency telemedicine, telenursing, telepharmacy, telerehabilitation, teletrauma care, telecardiology, telepsychiatry, teleradiology, telepathology, teledermatology, teledantistory, teleaudiology and teleophthalmology.
Web applications help telemedicine systems to function and still space for improvement available. There are three major categories of Telemedicine:
Web applications play a vital role in enabling the three categories to work. Store and forward involves in obtaining data from patient in form of medical images and bio signals. This data is sent to the doctor through web based software mostly when doctor is offline and later on he checks and examines when available. Similarly remote monitoring and real time interactions application involves in remotely monitoring patients using web technologies and electronic devices available to patient.
In AMIA annual symposium proceedings, a web application based system model was proposed for remote areas of Brazil where there were serious problems in delivering health services. This model introduced as HealthNet system with two major parts One is Telediagnosis and other is second opinion. The collaborating tools are ISDN and ATM for network service and Java and MySQL database along with XML technology for electronic patient record (EPR). This project has been running since 1999.
HealthNet module related to Telediagnosis Service is deployed in Clinical Hospital at Federal University of Pernambuco for supporting the Family Health Program have attracted government grants as a result of their better results to continue further development.[15][22]
3)- Health 2.0:
Health 2.0 is the term relevant to Web 2.0. It consists of specific web tools for facilitating persons in health related activities like doctors, patients, scientists and pharmacists through blogs, products, tagging, search and wikis etc. It is aimed at providing open source environment through web technology and computer network infrastructure for personalizing healthcare and promoting health education. Health 2.0 is also referred as “Medicine 2.0” and the idea behind is to move away from hospital based medicine and focus on promoting health, provide healthcare to people in their homes and empower customers to take responsibility for their own health.
Web 2.0 may be used in following five ways as Health 20:
Health 2.0 is therefore web based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools.
There are number of tools available online for serving the purpose of Health 2.0. We enlist few of these:[16]
Caucus:
Cacus is a discussion forum designed for healthcare communities, public or private. People who joined this forum do share documents, hints, tips and discussions and allow the community itself to rate and look after the content.
Howie:
Howie is designed to help patients recover from depression and anxiety by keep a diary between visits to the clinician. It can also be adapted for use in other long-term conditions involving self-care.
Ollie:
Ollie is designed for speech therapists working with children and parents. There are paper based exercise delivered with fun and attractive environment and the progress is observed in face to face review sessions.
Rally Round:
Rally Round helps families organize themselves when supporting relatives to live independently.
Carol:
Carol defines itself as a “care marketplace”, is an app trying to solve inefficiencies in the current healthcare system. It facilitates for online booking of goods and services under “care packages” relevant to Medicare and Healthcare.
Sermo:
Sermo is a community for about 50,000 physicians registered to exchange information and collaborate to better resolve health problems. Indu Subaiya, who is an MD, says that the business model could be as revolutionary as Google Adsense was: "it's mind boggling in a way that Google’s Adsense created a whole new set of dynamics. Anyhow Sermo is down that type of ground-breaking path."
4)- Semantic Web:
Semantic Web is lead by World Wide Web consortium (represented by W3C) is a collaborative movement to promote standards for data formats at World Wide Web. According to the W3C, “The Semantic Web provides a common framework for sharing and reusing data for applications, enterprises and community boundaries.” The term was coined by Tim Berners-Lee for a web of data that can be processed by machines.
W3C is working with different industries like Health Care and Life Sciences, eGovernment, and Energy in order to improve collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption through Semantic Web technology. They do this by aiding decision making in clinical research for example. Semantic Web technologies will bridge many forms of biological and medical information across institutions.[17][18]
SW HCLS IG:
Semantic Web Health Care and Life Science Interest Group is formed to develop, advocate, and support the use of Semantic Web technologies in the field of healthcare, life sciences, clinical research and translational medicine.
This group is working for the development and advancement on biological sciences, healthcare and translational medicine. This would be a revolutionary step in the field of healthcare and medicine made possible using web applications and web technologies.[17]
Web Apps Making Life Easier
No doubt web applications have made life much easier than ever before, it is mainly due to their powerful capability of updating clients with just an update in server. The availability of internet infrastructure and its rapid growth around the globe with advancement and much greater data handling capabilities of telecommunication networks has played a vital role in promoting the humankind attentions to web apps in their daily life.
There is unending list of web applications available to the world today which has made people’s life easy. Web apps are being developed for educations, business, agriculture, medical, security, surveillance, home usage, fun and entertainment, communications, shopping, traveling and many other aspects of human life. Here few of these are enlisted:
1)- Google:
Google is a biggest search engine database integrated into browser. It has over 22 billion pages. Anything on the web can be found in second by google. Google uses a unique algorithm called a PageRank system to get targeted results for your search queries.
2)- Gmail:
A ftee email service provided by Google is Gmail for sending/receiving emails, block spam, creating address book and other basic email related tasks. But it also has some more unique features that help to make it one of the most popular email services on the web to some more unique features such as:
3)- Google Maps:
Google Maps is one most powerful application introduced by Google for navigation, mapping. Google maps facilitate for street maps and rout planner for traveling by foot, car, bike or other public transport sources. There is a locator available for urban and business areas for many countries of the world. The primary data for satellite images is updated regularly but satellite images of maps every three years.
Google has introduced similar applications like Google Mars, Google Moon and Google Sky for viewing and panning through Mars, Moon and Sky.
4)- Google Documents:
Google Documents or Google Docs is Google’s software as a service office suit for creating and editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations imported through web or email. These documents are saved to Google drives and storage places for avoiding any loss to user. The storage limit for data allowed by Google is 15 GB maximum. The files can be stored in variety of formats.
5)- Google Analytics:
Google has a powerful feature of analytics which provides powerful digital analytics for anyone with a web presence, large or small. It's one of the most powerful digital analytics solutions available today and it's free for anyone to use. It is an extremely viable tool for executives, marketing professionals and content developers.
6)- Google Calendar:
Gmail users can benefit from Google Calander for time management. Its interface was designed by Kevin Fox in Ajax to view, add, drag and drop events for various date and times without any need for page reloading. It has many other features which ordinary calendars have like viewing modes of weekly, monthly and yearly.
7)- Skype:
Skype is a software application used for voice and video communications over the internet from around the world. Microsoft has recently joined hands with Skype to deliver more innovations to Skype. It has resulted in a web based skype application which will allow users to have voice and video conversation from their web browsers. Skype is really a wonderful application extensively used in business, educations, and daily communications.
8)- Facebook:
Facebook is online social network website. Accoring to Wikipedia it was founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
The website's membership initially was only for Harvard university students but later one it expanded in terms of membership to everyone around the world who is above 13 years of age. It requires registration with users existing email account to become the registered member and start using it.
Facebook has become a revenue generating entity due to space provided for advertisement to larger businesses around the world. According to facebook reports its revenue reaches up to $7872 during 2013.
It has some of very entertaining features like files, documents, voice, video and picture sharing online to all friend and family member added to one’s account. Text messaging, voice and video calls to connected members and broadcasting videos live over facebook links to be viewed around the world, everything free of cost makes it more attractive and useful tool for communication and socialization.
9)- Youtube:
Youtube founded in 2005 as a video sharing source on web. Users who creat their accounts to get registered on youtube website are allowed to share their personal videos. Any one can open youtube website to watch video shared by other people from around the world.
The company is located in San Bruno, California. Youtube uses Adobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display video contents like video clips, TV clips, music videos, video blogging, short original videos and educational videos of various sizes and formats using adobe flash video and HTML5 technology. It is a vital source for information, education and entertainment.
10)- Twitter:
Twitter is a type of online service for social networking and microblogging. It helps create and share ideas without barriers instantly to the world. Twitter enables registered users to read and post “tweets”, which are text messages of 140 characters maximum. Twitter allows businesses to advertise their products, gather real time market intelligence and build relationship with customers and partners.
Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, was first created by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass in March 2006.
11)- Wikipedia:
Wikipedia is online available free encyclopedia for people around the globe. It is the encyclopedia written collaboratively by its users. Anyone can write about anything free of cost, and anyone can edit to improve. Thus as the number of changing or editing increase the authentication of the article also improves. There are thousands of changes per hour which are recorded in article’s history.
12)- Word Press:
Word Press first released in May 27, 2003 is a content management and open source blogging tool which is designed using PHP and MySQL. It runs on a web hosting service with pug-in architecture and template system. According to Wikipedia Word Press is used by 18.9% of top 10 million websites as of August 2013 and more than 60 million websites in total. Its founders are Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.
13)- Drop Box:
Drop Box is safe and secure storage for personal documents, videos, pictures, keys, books and other stuff like this can be placed and retrieved from anywhere and anytime it is needed. There is no danger of loosing anything due to computer system or storage device crash as data is saved to more secure place through this powerful web app. It secures data with 256 bit AES encryption.
On Going Research On Web Apps
There are many platforms and research organizations working of development and improvements on web based applications. The aim is common, that is to deliver more secure, reliable and efficient web apps Efficiency in terms of speed, good graphical interfaces, less space and burden on processing machines and volubility for business, educations, communication and entertainment. There a many organizations, institutes and companies working day and night for the developments on web apps. In order to give an overview of recent and ongoing developments, just a few of these are described following:
1)- Famo.us:
It works to bring complex 3D graphics and realistic motion to stock web browsers and ordinary web developers. Earlier technology HTML5 had problem in DOM overhead of delivering slow web applications. Famo.us framework without plugins and native codes is creating mobile and java script applications which break performance bottleneck.
2)- Macromedia Flash:
Macromedia flash building next generation of web, introduced advancements enabling complex animations and fast loading movie files, were not possible with HTML before. It has all powers and capabilities of client-server technologies of the past. It allows to display big pictures in one screen which previously was done by a series of images and ordering capability makes it deliver solutions for plane manufacturing and financial service firms.[24]
3)- ICIW 2014:
Ninth international conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services asks for research papers for its conference to be held in July 2014. Along with other research areas there is a focus on IWAS (Internet and Web based Applications and Services). There is research going on for:[23]
4)- Web App Security:
Web Application security is very critical aspect of application design and implementations because it is providing space for hackers to attack database servers and important information access through the Web. The vulnerability of web applications is due to not testing apps before their launch and less focus in terms of budget by IT organizations.
The Web Security Group from Standford Security Laboratory delivers the research projects to focus on various aspects of browsers and web application security. It has prime focus on following major fields to provide a knowledge base and directions to Web developers and IT organizations for reducing security risks from web apps:[25]
5)- Semantic Web:
Semantic Web has been discussed earlier is lead by World Wide Web consortium (represented by W3C) is a collaborative movement to promote standards for data formats at world wide web.
W3C standard defines an “Open Web Platform” for application development to enable developers to build rich and interactive experiences which is powered by vast data stores, which are available on any device.
Their vision is develop Web of rich interactions, Web of data and services and Web of trust.[17]
To learn more about, what the Web Apps are? Watch the following video:
Biblography:
[13]- Borland Documentation for JBuilders, (2001) “Web Application Developer’s Guide”.
[14]- Wikipedia, (2003), “Web Applications”.
[15]- Wikipedia, (2004), “Telemedicine”.
[16]- Wikipedia, (2008), “Health 2.0”.
[17]- Wikipedia, (2002), “Semantic Web”.
[18]- Sencha, (2011) “Web Applications Come of Age.” Sencha, 1700 Seaport Boulevard Suite 120 Redwood City .
[19]- John B. Oladosu, Funmilola A. Ajala and Olukunle O. Popoola, (2005) “On The Use of Web Services Technology in E-Health Applications” at Computer Science and Engineering Department, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria.
[20]- Acunetix (2014), “Web Applications: What are They? What of Them?” available at:http://www.acunetix.com/websitesecurity/web-applications/
[21]- Gene Ostrovsky (Nova. 24, 2009) “The Regulatory Future of Mobile Medical Apps” on medGadget, available at: http://www.medgadget.com/2009/11/the_regulatory_future_of_mobile_medical_apps.html
[22]- Ana Karina P. Barbosa, Magdala de A. Novaes, Alexandre M. L. de Vasconcelos. (2003), “A Web Application to Support Telemedicine Services in Brazil”, Articles from AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings are provided here courtesy of “American Medical Informatics Association”.
[23]- IARIA, ICIW 2014, “The Ninth International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services” available at: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2014/CfPICIW14.html
[24]- Christine Perfetti and Jared M. Spool. (2002), “Macromedia Flash: A New Hop for Web Applications.”
[25]- The Web Security Group, Standford Web Security Research, available athttp://seclab.stanford.edu/websec/
Written By: Mr. Qazi Muhammad Imran
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