ZOPE users would love to have a product like ZOAX (ZOPE + AJAX) !

AJAX is the buzz word of the moment, Is it a fad? Yes it is, if you don’t know what it is. This technology has been around for years and used in some very high profile web applications but Search Giant “Google” made it popular.

Lets see what is AJAX  – Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or Ajax, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. It allows a developer to make calls to the server from the loaded page with Javascript and change the page based on the server’s answer without having to do a complete page reload.

In the simple and short words, Web that does not employ “a click, wait, and refresh” approach, as a result a smarter, more responsive, and more interactive.

As mentioned earlier, if AJAX has been around for so long (For Example, LoadOnDemand XML feature for the WebGrid, Microsoft created a Callback interface in ASP.NET 2.0 ), However, it seems that many people don’t recognize these as “AJAX” features. Now the question arises, why has it suddenly exploded onto the web scene? Answer could be, a technical name like “XMLHttpRequest”, this technique has a easy to remember name – “AJAX” also the main reason could be Google’s implementation using AJAX in Gmail, GoogleSuggest, and GoogleMap. Now this buzz word is out there so everyone wants to use it.

There is a lot of confusion around AJAX, like does AJAX has to be tied to a specific programming language such as JavaScript? Does the data used in an AJAX application has to be XML? Answer is AJAX is not tied to a particular programming language, data format, or network object.

Let’s move to the ZOPE part – AJAX is not tied to a particular programming language, data format, or network object. So, it can be used with ZOPE. There are several kind of libraries available to work with AJAX –

* Low-level client-side frameworks (LLF)
* Client-side Application frameworks (CSF)
* Server-side Javascript generation frameworks (SSF)
* XForm approach framework (XFF)

While Choosing a library for Zope-based applications, an AJAX library has to be taken in Client-side Application frameworks (CSF) or Server-side Javascript generation frameworks (SSF) as all the functionalities available in Low-level client-side frameworks (LLF) exists in Client-side Application frameworks (CSF).

ZOPE users would love to have a product like ZOAX (ZOPE + AJAX) that simply receives a request from the client and spits out xml. That is, a set of classes that call ZSQL methods and retrieve records then send that back in xml format.

It seems that AJAX will have a huge impact on the advancement of Web Applications…

There is a heavy competition going on in web world. ZOPE, Django, Plone will have to show something additional to face the challenges of Ruby, PHP, Java etc…

Related :
>>Choosing a Javascript library for Zope