WebSite vs WebApplication

The only similarity between a web site and a web application is that they both access HTML documents using the HTTP protocol over an internet or intranet connection. However, there are some differences which I shall attempt to identify in the following matrix:

	Web Site	Web Application
1	Will usually be available on the internet, but may be restricted to an organisation's intranet.	Will usually be restricted to the intranet owned by a particular organisation, but may be available on the internet for employees who travel beyond the reach of that intranet.
2	Can never be implemented as a desktop application.	May have exactly the same functionality as a desktop application. It may in fact be a desktop application with a web interface.
3	Can be accessed by anybody.	Can be accessed by authorised users only.
4	Can contain nothing but a collection of static pages. Although it is possible to pull the page content from a database such pages are rarely updated after they have been created, so those pages can still be regarded as static.	Contains dynamic pages which are built using data obtained from a central data store, which is usually a RDBMS.
5	May be updatable by a single person with everyone else having read-only access. For example, a web site which shows a pop star's schedule can only be updated by that star's agent, but anyone can visit the site and view the schedule.	Any authorised user may submit updates, subject to his/her authorisation level, and these updates would immediately be available to all other users.
6	May have parts of the system which can only be accessed after passing through a logon screen.	No part of the system can be accessed without passing through a logon screen.
7	Users may be able to self-register in order to pass through the logon screen.	Users can only be registered by a system administrator.
8	All users may have access to all pages in the web site, meaning that there may be no need for any sort of access control.	The application may cover several aspects of an organisation's business, such as sales, purchasing, inventory and shipping, in which case users will usually be restricted to their own particular area. This will require some sort of access control system, such as a role Based Access Control (RBAC) system.
9	May need URLs that can be bookmarked so that users can quickly return to a particular page.	Bookmarks are not used as each user must always navigate through the logon screen before starting a session.
10	May need special handling to deal with search engines.	As no URLs can be bookmarked (see above) then all aspects of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) are irrelevant.
11	Has no problems with the browser's BACK and FORWARD buttons.	The use of the browser's BACK and FORWARD buttons may cause problems, so may need code to detect their use and redirect to a more acceptable URL.
12	It is not possible to have more than one browser window open at a web site and to maintain separate state for each window. State is maintained in session data on the server, and the session identity is usually maintained in a cookie. As multiple browser windows on the same PC will by default share the same session cookie they will automatically share the same session data and cannot be independent of one another.	It may be beneficial to allow separate windows to have separate state as this follows the standard behaviour of most desktop applications which allow multiple instances, each with different state, to exist at the same time. This will allow the user to access one part of the application in one window and another part in another window.
13	Execution speed may need to be tuned so that the site can handle a high number of visitors/users.	As the number of users is limited to those who are authorised then execution speed should not be an issue. In this case the speed, and therefore cost, of application development is more important. In other words the focus should be on developer cycles, not cpu cycles.