In 2006, a wave of Ajax (short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) products will appear on the market, allowing IT companies to choose tools to build WebServices front-ends with similar desktop functions. As it emerges, the companies building these tools will also build service-oriented architecture tool sets to connect application-layer Web technologies with presentation-layer Web technologies. For those of you who have seen dynamic, Ajax-rendered Web pages, you haven't seen anything yet.
In 2006, a wave of Ajax (short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) products will appear on the market, allowing IT companies to choose tools to build WebServices front-ends with similar desktop functions. As it emerges, the companies building these tools will also build service-oriented architecture tool sets to connect application-layer Web technologies with presentation-layer Web technologies.
Steve Benfield, vice president of strategy at ClearNova, said: "Ajax is the way to build Web applications in the future. It will become a reality in a very short time."
ClearNova plans to release the second beta version of the ThinkCap JX rapid application development platform this month. The product moves client-centric applications to the server, allowing programmers to change the user interface in Java rather than JavaScript, thus enabling more developers to take advantage of Ajax functionality.
Microsoft has launched a beta version of Atlas, which implements Ajax in ASP.NET. BEA Systems is building Ajax capabilities into its portal products and adding Ajax APIs to runtime tools. Sun Microsystems plans to add Ajax to Java Server Faces. Enterprise service bus vendor CapeClear Software plans to add Ajax tools to its SOA-centric products.
David Clark, executive vice president of CapeClear, said: "Putting the two together makes sense at a programming level. Ajax has a lot of rules, which is its asynchronous model, which is similar to the ESB model. It is a good introduction to what we think An extension of the ESB pattern."
When Tibco Software acquired General Interface last year, it connected rich Internet application front-ends to middleware for the first time. According to General Interface founder and director of product marketing Kevin Hakman, the beta version of 3.1 has seen a 100% increase in downloads every quarter.
Hakman's team wanted to measure how much interest Ajax generated. They've been tracking Ajax search rates in Google since the summer. As of July 18, the click rate of Ajax on Google was 3.2 million, and by October 28 it had risen to 23.8 million.
"People have been wanting to do this for a long time, but were limited by HTML and browser limitations," Hakman said. "I think judging by the surge of interest they've shown, it can be done now."
However, like any rapidly spreading technology, the implementation of Ajax will encounter some difficulties.
"Maintaining Javascript code is very difficult," said Jeet Kaul, executive director of Java EE and Sun Java Application Server at Sun Microsystems. "There are limitations to what you can do and each browser handles it differently."
Sun's plan is to hide the complexity of Ajax in the 2006 version of the Java Studio Creator web development integrated environment. This will enable Java Server Faces to build Ajax using drag-and-drop tools. Sun also plans to add support for Ajax to the 2006 version of its Java Standard Edition product, Mustang.
BEA wants to demonstrate the alpha version of Ajax functionality being added to the WebLogic Portal 9.0 product at its September user conference. But Pieter Humphrey, senior product marketing manager at BEA, would like to see Ajax support beyond the portal API in a framework like Beehive as a real sweet spot for application providers.
"If you start connecting your user interfaces to backend services, you'll really gain something," he said, "because it will give the provider-agnostic client layer the ability to reuse services."
ClearNova is one of the first companies trying to cross this divide. Benfield said that if Ajax were a pure client-side technology, it wouldn't spread as much as expected.
He said: "You need to use Ajax to build business applications, not just Web pages. Now, you can handle more complex data sets without having to rewrite a lot of code."
Hakman pointed out that there is also a shortage of Ajax developers.
"It reminds me of what Web development was like in 1998," he said. "Everyone wanted to do it but there weren't enough skilled developers." Benfield noted that ClearNova was receiving 80 to 100 requests for its weekly Ajax Web magazine. registrants.
Kaul said Ajax has become one of the most clicked pages on Java.Net.
"It's really scary to see this situation," he said.
Clark has no doubt about the importance of Ajax.
He said: "There is no doubt that Ajax is becoming part of the future of SOA. If you are doing it, we hope you continue to do it."
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