title: Web vs Desktop Development (Online vs. Smart-Client)
body: <p>I work at a company with a large SAP investment, and we also have dozens of large .Net systems (mostly internally for engineering systems), and Java platforms (mostly for external web applications). As such, we have large development shops on ABAP, C#, and Java EE.</p>
  
  <p>We have decent standards for which platform to use in which domain, but we don't have a lot of clarity around when to use web UIs and when to use desktop UIs. </p>
  
  <p>I've seen some excellent research on this topic in the past (<a href="http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/747326.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">like this</a>), but I'd like something a little more structured </p>
  
  <p>I'd like to build a decision tree based on best practices to help with this question. </p>
  
  <p>Some of the criteria I've seen in the past include:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Is the application targeted to users
  with different OS configurations?</li>
  <li>Does the application require OS-type
  functionality for sorting and editing
  data? (I know that AJAX /
  asynchronous JS has made possible
  much richer desktop-like
  functionality to web applications,
  but some would argue the desktop is
  still king in this area)</li>
  <li>Will a web application be able to
  provide the availability,
  responsiveness, clarity, and utility
  that can be delivered with a desktop
  application?</li>
  </ul>