September 19, 2006

OpenAjax Alliance tackles interoperability

Standard JavaScript would allow coexistence of run-time libraries

"The purpose of the alliance is to make interoperability successful such that you can take AJAX technologies from one source and use it with another vendor's. Microsoft is one of [those] vendors and an important vendor in the AJAX community and it would be to everybody's advantage, particularly customers, if Microsoft's products would interoperate well with other people's products," said Ferraiolo. He added he was not making a statement that Microsoft products currently do not interoperate.

Although Microsoft has promoted AJAX via its Atlas technologies, Microsoft currently does not have plans to join.

"Microsoft has no firm plans to join the OpenAjax Alliance. However, Microsoft is very committed to working with the developer community and is engaged in dialogue with the OpenAjax Alliance organizers to learn more about the initiative," Microsoft said in a prepared statement.

The alliance seeks to serve as an industry catalyst to boost AJAX-enabled Web 2.0 applications. Ferraiolo defines Web 2.0 as a new generation of the Web focused on collaboration. OpenAjax technologies are intended to produce lower development costs, faster delivery of applications, vendor choice, interoperability, and a richer Web experience. Greater collaboration capabilities that can be added to existing HTML sites or used for new applications is another goal.

Also being unveiled on Wednesday is the organization's Web site and a white paper covering a description of AJAX, the AJAX value proposition and a technical section on AJAX architectures. These architectures include single and dual DOMs (Document Object Model), in which the single model involves processing everything in HTML browsers, while the dual approach involves using an XML parser that holds the description of the UI. The dual model offers a richer set of functionality but requires a larger download, typically, Ferraiolo said.

AJAX in the open source world also is being included in the alliance's list of issues to cover. One of the goals for the alliance is the ability to have a zero-cost option, but it's not trying to lock out vendors from making money at all," said Ferraiolo.

A second meeting of the alliance is planned for Oct. 5-6 in Santa Clara, Calif. The alliance on Oct. 5 plans to announce it has moved to a formal governance model that includes a steering committee. Goals and procedural issues also will be discussed. Security of AJAX also will be on the agenda, Ferraiolo said.

Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld.
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