The client is a regular WWW browser and can communicate with any server on the internet. The Web is attractive as an application platform because it eliminates the time and cost associated with application deployment. In the Web environment, deployment is instantaneous because the application resides on the server rather than the client. From the server, the application can be accessed from anywhere in the world. The Web, while providing significant benefits, introduces new technical challenges with respect to scalability, and management of session, state, transactions and security.
Web applications can face unpredictable and potentially enormous peak loads.
This demands a high performance architecture that is extremely scalable. The Web is a stateless environment, in which the client and server are loosely coupled. Applications must keep state information from one page to another if they are to avoid requiring users to re-enter information such as user name and password from page to page. The Web presents new security issues for companies wishing to make internal databases accessible to external users. User authorization and authentication are more challenging in the Web environment because of the large number of potential users.