The document discusses a hybrid web application architecture that combines client-side and server-side technologies. It presents layers of a typical web application and compares approaches that are fully client-side, fully server-side, or hybrid. The hybrid approach aims to achieve a 50% reduction in development and maintenance time compared to fully client-side or server-side approaches. It also discusses benefits and tradeoffs around productivity, control, and offline capabilities. Code examples are provided to illustrate implementing a hybrid address book application using Vaadin on the server-side and GWT-RPC on the client-side.