How often do we build a house and not create its architecture first? Zero times and that is because, without Web Application Architecture, there is no house. It is the very foundation upon which the entire house is built further.
Similarly, to build any kind of software application, be it a mobile app like Instagram or a web application like Netflix, we need to create architecture. Without architecture, there is no application, and it is the architecture itself that later determines how much innovation is possible with the application. So it would be best if you had an exquisite architecture for your application that is high quality, cost-effective, ready when needed, and able to carry the load of work.
Let’s discuss it in a vast description:
Define Web Application Architecture?
A web application is a software application that runs on the webserver instead of your local computer. It has various components in place such as databases, UI, UX, Business Logics, etc., and the web application architecture defines the relationship and interaction between these components and layers within the web development.
The system’s efficiency, scalability, reliability, security, and robustness, everything comes back to architecture, and that’s how crucial the web application architecture is to the web app.
How does Web Application Architecture work?
We know by now what a web application architecture is, but you must be thinking, how does it work? Well, there are two types of codes in a web application running in parallel: Client-side and server-side.
- Client-side code is the code that runs on the browser and responds to the inputs by the user. A combination of HTML, CSS, and Javascript is used to write the client-side code.
- Server-side code is the code that is on the server and responds to the HTTP requests. It is written using languages like C#, Java, Javascript, Python, PHP, etc. The user cannot see it.
A developer, while developing the application, decides what results will the server code give with respect to the client code in the browser. It can be seen by the user and reacts to user input.
Components of Web Application Architecture
The web application architecture has two components: UI/UX App components and Structural Components.
- UI/UX Components
User Interface (UI) / User Experience (UX) components include configurations, settings, displays, activity logs, dashboards, notifications, statistics, etc., in the app. These segments are part of the interface layer and have less to play in the operations of a web application architecture.
- Structural Components
The structural segments describe the functions that decide the user interaction results. It consists of client components, server components, including databases.
Client components have the client-side code and exist within the web browser; server components have two parts: App Logic and Database.
Layers of Web Application Architecture :
There should be four layers present in the web application architecture:
1. Presentation Layer
This layer has UI/UX components. The presentation layer gets the user input, processes the user’s request, interacts with the data service, and provides results back to the user.
2. Data Service Layer
Data Service Layer takes the inputs from the presentation layer and interacts with the business logic layer, and provides the results processed by the logic layer to the presentation layer.
3. Business Logic Layer
This layer defines the logic and rules for the business standards and operations, providing the data exchange with the data service layer at the user’s request.
4. Data Access Layer
This layer provides access to the database and manages the CRUD operations, create, read, update, delete. This layer is clubbed with the business layer due to which the Business layer is aware of which database to access and optimize the data obtained.
Types of Web Application Architecture :
The type depends on the logic division between the client and server sides of the application. The most used types of application architecture are as follows:
- Single Page Applications
A single page application is a type of architecture where new HTML pages are not loaded to serve the new page’s content but generated dynamically on the existing pages themselves through the ability of Javascript to manipulate the elements. And the end result here is quick content reloading and interactions.
- Microservices
This type of architecture consists of a collection of small services in which every single service is independent, implements single business logic within bounds, and conducts single functionality. These services communicate with each other using APIs. With this, the website development process speeds up, and productivity is enhanced.
- Serverless Architecture
In this type, a developer has to construct and run the applications and their services without bothering about the management of infrastructure as they use third-party cloud infrastructure services.
Conclusion
In the construction of web applications, there was a lot of confusion related to front-end web development technologies and frameworks to use and now there’s one more to the list – what kind of architecture to use. It gets easier when you know everything related to web application architecture. We have discussed everything in the description above that you should know before designing architecture or starting your subsequent web application development.
There are many web application development companies that you can consult for custom web application development services that will do everything for you, from selecting technology to the design of architecture to developing your application. You don’t have to worry about anything!
