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Ajax-Based Dojo Toolkit

 
 


With the OpenAjax Alliance comes
the possibility for a unified language, as well as a set
of APIs, on which developers could easily implement
dynamic Web applications. A unified toolkit would
offer consistency in a market that has myriad Ajaxbased
technologies in play, providing the enterprise
with a broader pool of developers able to offer longterm
support for applications and a stable base on
which to build applications. As is the case with many
fledgling technologies, one toolkit will become the
standard—whether through a standards body or by de
facto adoption—and Dojo is one of the favored
entrants in the race to become that standard.

The chief players of the OpenAjax
Alliance are BEA Systems, Google, IBM, Laszlo Systems,
Mozilla, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat and Sun
Microsystems. The main supporters of the Dojo Toolkit
are BEA, IBM, Informatica, Laszlo, Oracle and Sun.


There are several popular Ajaxbased
toolkits being used to build dynamic Web applications,
but all are in the early stages of maturity and have
some time to grow. Dojo is one of the first to receive
support from players like IBM and Sun, which may very
well propel it to the forefront of the race to become the
toolkit of choice. But the race is just beginning, and
Microsoft's Atlas is not far behind.

When we get together over drinks with friends, it hardly ever results in anything more than a hangover. When industry titans do the same, it can result in an alliance. BEA Systems, Borland, Google, IBM, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Zend Technologies and Zimbra have all publicly come out in support of an initiative designed to promote and standardize the use of Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) in the enterprise. The OpenAjax Alliance is a group of industry heavyweights that all have a stake in the success of Ajax technology and have joined forces to promote the technology and bring some sanity to the its ongoing development.

Dynamic Web applications that act more like rich client interfaces have been available for some time through the innovative use of some of the less-well-understood features of scripting languages, such as JavaScript. As mainstream adoption of service-oriented architecture has taken hold, there has been an explosion of available technology based on Ajax, usually comprising simple client- and server-side libraries in JavaScript and server-side languages, such as PHP. Ajax-based technology appeals to developers not only because of its dynamic communication paradigm, but also because of its abstraction of differences in event and DOM objects between browsers--things that have pained developers trying to support multiple browser environments, and which usually have caused them to give up and support only one.

Nonstandard Standard

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