Use Ajax to glorify SOA

Ajax for those who have seen dynamic, Ajax-rendered web pages, you haven't seen anything.

In the 2006, a wave of Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML abbreviations) will appear on the market, enabling IT companies to choose tools to build a webservices front-end similar to desktop functionality. As it emerges, companies that build these tools also build a service-oriented architecture toolset that links application-tier Web technologies to presentation-layer Web technologies.

"Ajax is a way to build web apps in the future," said Steve Benfield, Clearnova's vice-president for strategy. It will become a reality in a very short period of time. ”

Clearnova plans to release the second beta version of the Thinkcap JX Rapid Application development platform this month. The product moved client-centric applications to the server, allowing programmers to change user interfaces in Java instead of JavaScript, allowing more developers to take advantage of Ajax capabilities.

Microsoft has launched the beta version of Atlas, which implements Ajax in ASP.net. BEA Systems Company is building AJAX functionality into its portal products and adding AJAX APIs to the runtime tools. Sun Microsystems Company plans to add Ajax to the Java Server Faces. Capeclear Software, an enterprise service bus provider, plans to add Ajax tools to its SOA-centric offerings.

"The combination of the two is reasonable at the programming level," said David Clark, executive vice president of Capeclear. Ajax has many rules, that is, its asynchronous model, which is similar to an ESB model. It's an extension of the good ESB pattern we think. ”

When Tibco Software acquired general interface last year, it first contacted the front-end of rich Internet applications to middleware. According to Kevin Hakman, founder and product marketing Director of General interface, the beta version of 3.1 is increasing by 100% per quarter in terms of downloads.

Hakman's team is trying to figure out how much interest Ajax is causing. They have been tracking the search rate for Ajax in Google since the summer. By July 18, Ajax had 3.2 million hits on Googel, up to 23.8 million times by October 28.

Hakman said: "People have long wanted to do this, but only because of HTML and browser restrictions are limited." I think that from the surge of interest they have shown, it can now be done. ”

However, as with any rapidly spreading technology, the implementation of Ajax can also encounter some difficulties.

"Maintaining JavaScript code is difficult," said Jeet Kaul, executive director for Java EE and Sun Java application Server, Sun Microsystems. You have a lot of limitations to deal with and each browser has a different way of handling it. ”

Sun's plan is to hide the complexities of Ajax in the 2006 version of the Java Studio Creator Web Development Integration environment. This will enable Java Server faces to component Ajax in the drag-and-drop tool. Sun also plans to include Ajax support in the 2006 version of the Java Standard Edition product Mustang.

Bea wants to present the alpha version of the AJAX features in the WebLogic Portal 9.0 product at a user's meeting in September. But BEA Senior product marketing manager, Pieter Humphrey, wants to see Ajax support beyond the portal API in a similar beehive framework as a real dessert for application providers.

He said: "If you start to connect your user interface to the backend service, then you will really get something." Because it makes the provider-independent client layer gain the ability to reuse the service. ”

Clearnova is one of the first companies to try to cross this chasm. Benfield said that if Ajax were a pure client technology, it would not be propagated as expected.

"You need to use AJAX to build business applications, not just Web pages," he said. Now you can work with more complex datasets without having to rewrite a lot of code. ”

Hakman pointed out that Ajax developers are also very scarce.

"It reminds me of the 1998-year Web site development scenario," he said. Everyone wants to do it, but there are no developers who are skilled enough. "Benfield points out that Clearnova is receiving 80 to 100 registrations in the weekly Ajax Network magazine.

Kaul says Ajax has become one of the top-clicked pages on java.net.

"It's terrible to see this. "he said.

Clark has no doubt about the importance of Ajax.

"There is no doubt that Ajax is becoming a part of future SOA," he said. If you are doing it, we hope you will go on doing it. ”