When developing a web application the traditional way is to develop the application from scratch using a general purpose language such as PHP, Grails, Java/JSP, etc. This presentation will show that a second generation wiki (examples based on XWiki: http://xwiki.org) can be used as a web development platform to develop applications on top of it, providing much if not all the needed infrastructure scaffolding.
The advantages are similar to those of using an application sever. However whereas an application server offers technical services only, a wiki platform offers higher level services such as content management, rendering, storage, WYSIWYGeditor, user management, and a lot more.
Not only are these services offered, you can develop using them in your traditional IDE or in the runtime, directly in wiki pages. This allows developing web applications extremely quickly with a fast turnaround time, which is perfect for adhoc web application development.