Mobile Application Development On Force.com Touch Platform-Part 3

This is in continuation with my previous posts .This post basically covers the difference between local and server side implementation approach for developing cross platform hybrid  mobile application on touch platform.

An hybrid mobile application is cross platform and generally use phonegap that comes bundled with mobile SDK to develop the application. Web developers familiar with the javascript will find it very friendly to learn and develop hybrid mobile application.

The following table below summarizes the difference and comparison between local(javascript on local device and using ForceTK/RemoteTk  library) and server side(Visualforce with Javascript Remoting) approach:

Local/ServerSide Hybrid mobile application development on touch platform

Feature	local Approach using mobile packs(Backbone js/angulur js/jquerymobile)	Server side Approach using Visualforce page
Databinding	ForceTK or RemoteTK,Javascript modal functions for angular js or backbone js library functions	Javascript Remoting can be used
Offline Support	Smartstore.js can be used to achieve .Its relatively easier to provide this functionality in local side approach	Html5 app cache concept can be used to provide offline(Not secure ,Smartstore Recommended),Browser capacity to store data is limited and hence if offline is major part of requirement its essential to develop with local side approach
Packaging	Repeated Packaging for any changes to the application	Less Frequent packaging due to One Time SFDC Package Deployment
SFDC API	Remote TK consumes no API calls and hence can be used to save API calls,ForceTK consumes API call	Visualforce Remoting feature and hence API calls are only consumed for DML operations
Code Storage	The javascript library,CSS and whole code resides on the device	The main javscript is written inside the visualforce pages
User Interface	Jquery mobile can be used to provide good user interface.With angular and backbone libraries such as bootstrap can be used	Jquery mobile is preferred .Although no hard rule ,any UI CSS library can be kept in static resource and used to develop mobile friendly UI
Development Effort	The developer must be good in CSS,HTML5 and must be familiar with javscript libraries like angular or backbone.js	The knowledge of visualforce ,jquerymobile and apex remoting is enough to develop server side hybrid application

The conclusion is at this point it really depends on the requirement to adopt which development model to prefer depending on the requirements .

Reference

http://www2.developerforce.com/mobile/