Define realtime on the web for business

Question

It drives me nuts to hear business proponents using the term realtime for web-based systems. I\'m becoming the crazy in the room, chanting, \"There is no such thing as real

Answer 1

Real-time means one thing to an embedded programmer. It means something else to a normal person. If my online balance always matches my ATM/bank-teller's balance, I would call that pretty real-time. If I can transfer money between accounts, refresh the screen, and immediately see the completed transfer, I would call that real-time.

If you web backend just prints out orders for human intervention, or dumps user-commands in a file for offline batch processing, that would not be realtime.