Single page applications (SPA) have become the for web application development. Angular, React, Vue.js and Ember.js are the best known representatives from this category of web frameworks. But does this client architecture fit every application? Or are there alternatives that may fit better and are less complex to develop?

In the first part of the talk, the differences between SPAs and classic, server-side approaches are explained and the advantages and disadvantages are discussed.

The second part reports on a current customer project in which the front end of a large ERP system had to be replaced by a modern web front end. The chosen framework is Vaadin Flow, a server-side web framework that makes development of web applications entirely in Java possible.

First, the new architecture of Vaadin Flow, which is no longer based on GWT but on web components, is explained. Then it will be shown how configurable, form-based and data-centric web applications can be implemented very efficiently by using jOOQ as a database access layer.