The use of AJAX as an approach seems to be taking off.

Is this correct, or have I just read the hype?

Is Ajax a proven approach that one should look at for building high-load
websites?

If yes, can anyone recommend good reading material?

I see that there is a Wrox Professional Ajax book, but I've not seen any
reviews of this.

Thanks in advance

Griff

Hi,

have also a look at http://atlas.asp.net

Atlas is MS's implementation of AJAX, as an Framework on top of ASP.NET 2.0.

Show quoteHide quote

hi,

it seems to be very powerful, but is AJAX only available on ASP.NET 2.0 or
it can be used on ASP.NET 1.1 too?

thanks

ThunderMusic

Show quoteHide quote

AJAX is nothing new, infact it could have been deployed since javascript got
xml support (along time ago), it is simply a collection of technologies (it
means Asynchronous Javascript And Xml)

Basically a client continually polls a web service for information on
demand, (this is done with event tracking in java script). The service
returns XML formatted information inresponse to the poll, this is picked up
by the javascript client and used to dynamically re-render the page.

Nothing major, however there are tools kits and tutorials out there to show
its use.

All you need is the javascript to encorporate into the client pages (its all
done and on the net), a webservice that can respond to these calls and you
are done.

HTH
kind Regards
Taz

Tarun

Thanks for the summary - very useful.

I guess before I invest time investigating this I really would like an idea
of when and (more importantly) when not to use it.  What scenarios would one
envisage?

I understand that this prevents having to re-post the page (effectively just
get fragments as and when they become available) and this can improve the
users' experience.  However, what about the "server's experience"?  Would a
server have to perform more work overall or less?  If more, then is this
truly scalable?

Thanks if you can provide further insight.

Griff

That question could go so deep.  It would all depend on how you
architect your system.  I am a bit fuzzy from the AJAX perspective, but
if you want to have a highly available server, I would consider a
caching scheme.

Depending on how you set it up, you can conserve large amounts of
system resources by not having to query a database, or a webservice,
etc.  There are several aspects of caching as well to consider, such as
memory considerations.

A combination of AJAX and caching would work very well, however, i do
not know how to guide you in it's implementation.

Recomended Links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/compcat/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/compcat/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/cachingarch.asp

HTH,
Darren Kopp
http://blog.secudocs.com/

Well, i think it may be a bit better for a high load site because you
will cut down on the data sending out since you won't be sending out
the entire page, just the data returned by whatever ajax method.

Also you may want to consider who the audience is.  AJAX is dependant
on javascript, and not everyone has it enabled (but most due).

However, I have seen some people who find that AJAX increased the
development time due to lack of integrated debugging and such.  I have
not used AJAX in any of the web projects that I have done yet, so I
can't give you personal views of AJAX.

Hi,

Darren Kopp wrote:
I find Ajax surprisingly easy to debug. If you enable script debugging
in IE, you can debug the client-side code and the server-side code in
the same instance of Visual Studio (at least as long as everything runs
in localhost).

If you need your web app to run in Firefox too, you'll need Venkman to
debug the client-side, but it's very easy to set-up.

HTH,
Laurent

You might also want to take a look at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/ASPNetSpicedAjax.asp

which covers one of the more popular .NET implementations.

KArl

Show quoteHide quote

There are many ASP.NET + AJAX frameworks, like for example FastPage
(http://fastpage.more.at) ...

This integrates very easy ... you need only to change youк class Page
to FastPage and your Page stay AJAX style ... I mean PostBacks now not
refresh page but going to server, gets changes in page, and update it,
everything automatic ... really amazing thing!!!

And you can use more PostBack ... you can have no fear upon PostBacks
.... in DataGrids its very comfortable ... see samples and try demo :)

Show quote Hide quote If you are looking for an overview of frameworks the combine AJAX and
ASP.NET programming, please look at:
http://www.daniel-zeiss.de/AJAXComparison/Results.htm

All the frameworks listed here have one unique AJAX feature: They allow
updating page content without programming AJAX directly. Direct AJAX
programming would mean dealing with client scripts, DHTML, method
proxies, client side rendering and so on...

Try http://www.ajaxtoday.com

Show quoteHide quote

Using american dates by default
Duplicate custom controls
List files in a directory, modify name.
PostBackURL to new window
'Timeout period elapsed prior to obtaining a connection from the pool.' - Please help.
Why use disconnected datasets?
crystal report viewer in landscape
Custom HTML Control Tags - Lets Try Again :)
How do I set the CssClass for a GridView sorting link?
Referencing the data within a sqldatasource dataset