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 that as you have a set of tasks that executes in order to execute a task, if one task takes more then the defined time to finish, the whole process fails and probably the system crashes. For example, the application used to control the Mars exploratory vehicle is considered to be an real-time application, even that a command triggered on earth needs 8 minutes to achieves the vehicle and the images of the vehicke cameras takes more 8 minutes to reach the earth. So even with a 16 minutes latency between taking the action and seeing the result it can be defined as real-time, because if it takes more than the 16 minutes planned delay, there is a huge risk that the vehicle could collide with a rock or fall into a depression.

Back to your example, I don't see a ATM machine, or the above mentioned balances as real-time, they could be Online or Updated but not Real-Time as the system you not crash if takes more time then expected to complete a withdraw at a ATM.