Introduction

The value of Web Services to the Internet, and specifically web applications, is hard to deny.

Bill Gates, in his memo, calls it “the next sea change” and notes that the Internet can “make software far more powerful by incorporating a services model.” ( 1 )

In technology, this rise in the importance of Web Services has triggered a move to AJAX and client-side development.

AJAX has rapidly become the presentation valve of choice for Web Services. Though Microsoft invented AJAX, short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, in the late 1990s and introduced it ( on the market ), it is companies like Google, Netflix and Yahoo! that are capitalizing on the technology today.

AJAX represents a new approach to webware development – a changing of the guard, or handing over of power, from the narrow sector of nigh-omnipotent systems engineers to Mr. & Mrs. Joe Programmer. Armed with only an Application Programming Interface (API) and an extremely accessible battery of technical documentation, the programming public now wields an infinately vast wealth of data to operate anything from a custom search engine to a social network to planetary observation posts at a whim, courtesy of an ever growing class of service providers.

How and why did this change happen? Basically, because of a growing shift among software vendors in their distribution methods from a product to a services model. This shift resulted in a decentralization of their code across the server/client interface allowing former end users to become 2ndtier programmers in the software lifecyle. In short, AJAX builds applications that run inside a Web browser but behave like client-based apps. When a page needs updating, the application uses XML to tell the Web server what it needs to update and JavaScript to process the response. The end result is a faster interface that allows for added functionality such as drag and drop.