Applications are bundle of code developed to perform a task or job. Microsoft word is a word processing application. Applications can be developed for different destinations namely traditional desktop application, web application and most recently arrived cloud application.
When personal computers came into being in the 80's , most applications are built for them. These applications are called desktop application. They are installed before they could be used. They use local machine resources. They are always there and completely local. Example: Microsoft word application and documents created by them on a one's machine. Desktop applications are rich i features, immediate in user action response time.
With the arrival of web, a new category applications web applications came into practice. These applications are loaded in the server and made available to user through a browser. Data related to an web application also stays in a server. Since user and web application server are separated by distance, web application tend to be simple and are not usually not rich in features. Web applications are slow in response time because of remoteness of the server holding "application" and " data". Example: A banking application or railway reservation application.
With the advent of cloud computing infrastructure a new genera of applications " cloud applications" have come it being. Cloud application combine the best of desktop and web applications. They have richness of desktop applications and work using a remote server for hosting an application data. The richness is achieved by "downloading" application to browser on the local machine. The downloaded application offers richness and better response time. Example Gmail
