RIA – Rich Internet Applications (Marc Domenig)

Rich Internet Applications, or RIA, are web-based applications that approach the speed and elegance of local applications. The term “Rich Internet Application” was introduced in a Macromedia white paper in March 2002.

In traditional web applications, all activity used to be centered on client-server architecture with a thin client. Under this system all processing used to be done on the server. The client was used only to display static content. This proved to be a very slow and tedious process as it required all the interactions to pass through the server. With RIA, a client side technology can be made use of which is capable of executing the instructions on the client’s computer. The biggest advantage of RIA is that it can circumvent the slow and synchronous loop for multiple user interactions.