How do you create a reliable web application?

Creating a reliable web application is not a simple task. It requires careful planning, designing, testing, and maintaining of various components and features that work together to deliver a satisfying user experience. In this article, you will learn some basic steps and best practices to follow in the software development life cycle (SDLC) to build a web application that is reliable, secure, and scalable.

1 Define the requirements

The first step in the SDLC is to define the requirements of your web application. What is the purpose of your web application? Who are your target users? What are their needs and expectations? How will you measure the success of your web application? These are some of the questions you need to answer before you start coding. You can use various tools and methods to gather and document the requirements, such as interviews, surveys, user stories, use cases, and wireframes.

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2 Design the architecture

The next step in the SDLC is to design the architecture of your web application. This involves deciding how your web application will be structured, how it will communicate with other systems, and how it will handle data, security, and performance. You can use different architectural patterns and principles, such as modular, layered, microservices, or serverless, to design your web application. You should also consider the trade-offs and challenges of each approach, such as complexity, scalability, reliability, and cost.

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3 Develop the code

The third step in the SDLC is to develop the code of your web application. This involves choosing the programming languages, frameworks, libraries, and tools that best suit your web application's functionality and requirements. You should also follow the coding standards and best practices of your chosen technologies, such as naming conventions, indentation, comments, and documentation. You should also use version control, code review, and testing tools to ensure the quality and consistency of your code.

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Patrick Walling

Experienced Java and Oracle PL/SQL Developer with Strong Performance Tuning Skills and SDLC experience
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I love how there is no mention of technical documentation of the logic before developing the code. The third step in the SDLC is to map out the logic of the system. Sequence diagrams, hierarchy diagrams, flowcharts and pseudo code are essential to not only creating a reliable application, but an efficient and maintainable one as well. You have got to create the road map of the logic before you start coding. It makes the coding the easy part of the process and gives your QA team an opportunity to see where the system is making decisions so they can tune their testing to test all logical branches.

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4 Test the functionality

The fourth step in the SDLC is to test the functionality of your web application. This involves verifying that your web application meets the requirements, works as expected, and does not have any errors or bugs. You can use different types of testing, such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and user acceptance testing, to test your web application. You should also use testing tools and frameworks, such as Selenium, Jest, or Mocha, to automate and simplify your testing process.

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5 Deploy the product

The fifth step in the SDLC is to deploy the product of your web application. This involves transferring your web application from the development environment to the production environment, where it will be accessible to the end users. You should also ensure that your web application is secure, stable, and scalable in the production environment. You can use different deployment methods and tools, such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, or cloud services, to automate and streamline your deployment process.

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6 Maintain the performance

The final step in the SDLC is to maintain the performance of your web application. This involves monitoring, updating, and improving your web application based on the feedback, usage, and issues of the end users. You should also ensure that your web application is compatible with the latest technologies, standards, and regulations. You can use different maintenance methods and tools, such as analytics, logging, debugging, or refactoring, to optimize and enhance your web application.

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Rohan K.

Director of Software Engineering at Expedia Group
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Maintaining performance of your application is crucial to retain customers and deliver business value to the company. For example, if you built a single page application that takes 1 second to load overall and with a new change your team made, now that same page takes 2 seconds to load, the page is thus become slow and you are very likely to lose customers. In today's world, people expect everything to load fast and have become more impatient. So performance is something you should always monitor and test for with every code change.

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Atul Singh

Sr. Manager, Software Engineering | Head of Software Engineering | E-Commerce | People Technology | Technical Leadership | Strategy | Software Architecture and Development | Cloud Technology | Mentor
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Performance and responsiveness is a key attribute to adoption of any web application. In general, if an application is taking more than a second to load, it is most likely to loose focus/attention of its customer. Now, as an application goes through multiple changes throughout it's life cycle, it is important to monitor its performance. Example: The data that an application was handling 10X in one year, and hence the indexing on the database should be relooked at.

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7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Patrick Walling

Experienced Java and Oracle PL/SQL Developer with Strong Performance Tuning Skills and SDLC experience
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Reliability, efficiency and maintainability are the three main requirements of any software development. If you maintain focus on those three elements and take the time to create the diagrams and flows of the software you build you can avoid a lot of heartache. Testing isn't the answer, it's the backstop. Planning and organizing the technical documentation prior to coding is the answer. If it doesn't make sense on paper it won't make sense when you code it no matter how good you are at coding. Write it out don't just code it and expect it to work. I rely on others to validate my logic prior to coding instead of as an afterthought. Flowcharts and pseudocode help me accomplish this peer review in advance. You can code without defects.

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How do you create a reliable web application?

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1 Define the requirements

2 Design the architecture

3 Develop the code

4 Test the functionality

5 Deploy the product

6 Maintain the performance

7 Here’s what else to consider

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

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