Client Side vs Server Side Querying: When to use each?

Question

Relatively new to developing for Sharepoint, but building a website with a lot of functionality. The frontpage alone is making 5 queries to separate lists and has numerous javascript libraries associated with it. Currently, I am using the js SPServices library to query each set of data whereas webparts are mostly delegated to tasks such as event-listeners and the like.

This got me thinking, am I doing too much client side? Should I move all my SPServices calls to serverside processing? How do you determine which approach is best?

Thanks.

Answer 1

As always the answer is: It depends.

If your page only retrieves the data once and none of the queries takes a very long time, then you're generating the least load on the server (and have the least development) by just executing the queries on the server.

But if:

• Some of the queries takes a long time
• You're providing interaction with the data which may cause reloads of part of the data
• The users should be able to load more information for some of the lists

Then you're better of developing client side queries.

As you've already implemented the Client side code I would not redo it.