Thanks for the links Paul. I've seen the Wikipedia entry before but I personally feel that it's quite a weak definition. The W3C one is new to me and is quite interesting but the working group is for client-side stuff only.
I suppose some of the problems I have with the idea of a Web app being any application that runs server-side or client side are:
the usual definition of an application is too loose;
this kind of definition would seem to include simple scripts running either side e.g. would a counter script count as a Web app;
it doesn't make any division between services and other tools e.g. would a search engine count as a Web app or a service.
I'm hoping to arrive at a definition which is pretty wide in scope but also sets out firm criteria for what is and isn't a Web app. The reason that I'm hoping to do this is because Web Engineering techniques are going to be suitable for the design of Web apps and not necessarily suitable for the design of other services delivered over the Web.
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