<< WHICH IS AJAX? >>

AJAX = Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.

AJAX is not a new programming language, but a new way to use existing standards.

AJAX is the art of exchanging data with a server, and update parts of a web page - without reloading the whole page.

It is a web development technique for creating interactive applications by combining three existing technologies:

• HTML (or XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to present information;
• Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript to dynamically interact with data and
• XML and XSLT, to exchange and manipulate data in a sync with a web server (although AJAX applications can use other technologies, including plain text, for this work)

AJAX applications can send requests to the web server to obtain only the information required, using SOAP or some other language for web services based on XML, and using JavaScript on the client to process the web server response. This result in greater interaction through the reduction of information exchanged between server and client as part of the process of information does the customer, freeing the server for that job. The downside is that the initial download of the page is slower to take to download all the JavaScript code.