Sun’s jMaki does mix-and-match AJAX widgets

With its jMaki technology, Sun is addressing an issue with AJAX, but also may face obstacles, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink.

“I can see that [jMaki] would definitely be useful. One of the challenges that AJAX faces is the development is [in] JavaScript, so it’s hard to maintain, it’s hard to debug,” Bloomberg said. “Moving to a Java development environment makes a lot of sense.

“The challenge is going to be whether the widgets are going to be easy to test, easy to deploy,” he said. Developers do not want code that is scattered and hard to maintain, he said.

Bloomberg said that Icesoft, with its Icefaces product, offers AJAX functionality that does not require the use of JavaScript.

Read more at: InfoWorld

Startups Board the AJAX Bandwagon

ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer said Web developers don’t want to limit themselves to building Internet Explorer-only applications, so the move to AJAX and products like ICEfaces signals a movement toward more widely accepted non-Microsoft technologies for rich browsers.

“Instead of it compiling Java code, ICEfaces is outputting AJAX,” Schmelzer said. “They want to turn all of the Java developers into AJAX developers. They [ICEsoft] claim any JSP application can be rendered as an AJAX application without the developer having to do anything. If they can flip the switch, I think it will be pretty ubiquitous.”

Read more at: internetnews.com

How To Overcome Ajax Roadblocks

“Google brought in a big team of the top Ajax developers,” in order to launch its Ajax-powered services, notes Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. “But Google is a multiple-billion dollar company and so it’s been able to do that.”

Schmelzer has no doubt that Ajax will ultimately become widely deployed with Web services and SOA.

“We’re not seeing it much today yet, but we will in the future,” he believes. “Ajax hasn’t made its way into products yet, but it certainly will soon. Probably within the next twenty-four months it will be hard to find a significant enterprise application that doesn’t have some Ajax in it.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices