Advantages and Disadvantages of the Web-DBMS Approach

The web as a platform for database system can deliver innovative solutions for both inter-and intra-company business issues. Unfortunately, there are also disadvantages associated with this approach.

ADVANTAGES

1. Advantages that come through the use of a DBMS
2. Simplicity
3. In its original form, HTML as a markup language was easy for both developer and naïve end-users to learn.
4. Platform Independence
5. Graphical User Interface
6. Standardization

HTML is a de facto standard to which all web browser adhere, allowing an HTML document on one machine to be read by users on any machine in the world with an internet connection and web browser, using HTML, developers learn a single language and end-users use a single GUI.
6) Cross-platform support
7) Transparent network access
8) Scalable deployment
9) Innovation
As an internet platform the web enables organizations to provide new services and reach new customers through globally accessible applications. Such benefit were not previously available with host-based or traditional client-server and groupware applications.

DISADVANTAGES

1) Reliability
The internet is currently an unreliable and slow communication medium-when a request is carried across the internet, there is no real guarantee of delivery.

2) Security
Security is of great concern for an organization that makes its database accessible on the web. User authentication and secure data transmission are critical because of the large number of potentially anonymous users.

3) Cost
Cost of maintenance is very expensive.

4) Scalability
Web application can face unpredictable and potentially enormous peak loads. This requires the development of a high performance server architecture that is highly scalable. To improve scalability, web farms have been introduced with two or more servers hosting the same site. HTTP requests are usually routed to each server in the farm in a round-robin fashion, to distribute load and allow the site to handle more requests. However, this can make maintaining state information more complex.

5) Limited functionally of HTML

6) Statelessness
The statelessness of the web environment makes the management of database connections and user transaction difficult requirement application to maintain additional information.

7) Bandwidth

8) Performance
Many parts of complex web database clients center around interpreted languages, making them slower than the traditional database clients, which are natively complied.

9) Immaturity of development tools.