Benefits Of AJAX Application For Web Server

With the increased interest in Web 2.0, AJAX, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is attracting the eyes of the businesses all over the world. The term “Ajax” was coined for the first time on 18 February 2005 by Jesse James Garrett and since then it is being used to create asynchronous web applications on the client-side.

The main reason behind the popularity of Ajax is that it’s not a single technology, but it’s a group of technologies like HTML, CSS, DOM, XML, XSLT, XMLHttpRequest and JavaScript. The contributions made by these technologies are:

• XHTML or HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): They provide the various standards to provide content to the user.
• Document Object Model (DOM): It allows the dynamic representation of content and allows the interaction between the user and the information.
• XML HTTP Request: It allows asynchronous data retrieval and avoids full page reloads between the browser and server.
• XML and XSLT: provides the format for data manipulation and ways to transfer and exchange the data between the server and client.
• JavaScript (JS): It has the most significant role in web applications as it unifies all the elements together to operate in an effective manner.

The start-stop-start-stop nature of traditional web pages has been eliminated with the help of Ajax applications as it requires only small bits of information from the server instead of entire pages. Previously in case of synchronous model, the need was to wait for the whole page to become active but with asynchronous model provided by Ajax, the individual components of the page are updated independently.

Now after having an idea about Ajax, let’s focus on the benefits of using Ajax application on web server:

• Open Standard: Ajax is supported by almost every web browser and platform. Even now it comes in the count of most trusted brands of application platform in the world.
• Limited processing on the server: As we know that in case of Ajax, the server is not required to process all the form elements, only the necessary data is sent to the user. So there is a limited processing on the server.
• Bandwidth Reduction: The components of the site which are requested are loaded very fast with the help of Ajax application. Since the web page does not need to reload its complete content, the bandwidth required per request also undergoes a significant reduction.
• Vast compatibility range: On one side Ajax is browser independent, and on the other, it’s applicable to most of the standard web servers and server-side languages, be it PHP, ASP, ASP.net, Cold Fusion, Perl or any other.

AJAX has changed the user experience on desktop as well as on mobile devices. It also plays a crucial role in rich internet applications and many web 2.0 applications like Google, yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon and many others. From Pocket PC to Smartphone Devices everything supports AJAX. With increasing speed of wireless networks and processor power, AJAX is sure to play an important role in enhancing mobile user experience too.