Consider a web application that works with somewhat sensitive data on reliable, high performance clients.
The data needs to be processed and manipulated. So far I have learned that when possible, data processing should be a serverside concern because of the following reasons (amongst others)
-
There is no data exposed that shouldn’t be
-
You can’t rely on client performance
Nevertheless, I would like to to processing clientside because of the following reasons:
-
There are a lot of operations that need to be done on the same set of data. If i would do them serverside, I would have to do a lot of requests which will cause ugly & bloated client side code. If I do things on the client, I can use a convenient service which exposes a neat API. This is the main reason for me.
-
If I load the data on initialization, I don’t have to rely on the server further.
-
The application is used in-house only. I know the clients and don’t have to burden the server with operations I know the client is perfectly capable of doing.
So, when can I do data operations client side with good conscience?
Yes, you can.
If the your data operations are about a set of data specific for a client, they should be done on the client.
They are not “data operations” as usually meant. Work on data obtained belong not to data server, but to application server. And the last can easily be done more thin making clients a bit thicker. It is not against some common rules. Finding the correct balance is wholely on you.