artima - Ajax Framework Collision

Ajax Framework Collision

An Interview with ICESoft's Steve Maryka from JavaOne 2007

by Frank Sommers and Bill Venners

June 21, 2007

Summary

Using Ajax toolkits is a popular way to make JSF components more interactive. But multiple Ajax toolkits on the client can produce unintended consequences, explains ICESoft's Steve Maryka in this interview with Artima.

One of the key promises of Java Server Faces (JSF) was that it would provide a standard Java client-side component technology, allowing for JSF-compliant components to be mixed and matched in an application.

As JSF components become more sophisticated and interactive, however, developers must increasingly be careful about component interoperability, according to Steve Maryka, CTO of ICESoft, a JSF component vendor. The reason has not much to do with JSF itself, but with the various Ajax libraries sophisticated JSF component rely on in their implementation.

According to Maryka, the JSF specifications do not say much about introducing Ajax and JavaScript libraries into the JSF framework. As a result, JSF component vendors have been using different combinations of Ajax libraries and in different ways. When using components from multiple JSF toolkits, the accompanying Ajax libraries can collide in unpleasant ways:

The JSF specification, as it is, never addressed Ajax interaction within the framework. As you use different technologies, and use different techniques to make Ajax work within JSF, you're almost certainly are going to run into issues, whether they be at the framework level or at the component level. There will be concerns of either JavaScript collisions, or framework collisions, because the implementations are using different techniques.

For example, many components use XMLHttpRequest to obtain data. If you use many [different] frameworks, you are going to, at some point, collide in the number of connections they require. The browser has a limited number of connections it supports. If you have a bunch of requests going on in the page, you can have applications that essentially freeze up because the browser can't handle the connection requirements. You also can get namespace collisions within the JavaScript itself.

Steve Maryka, CTO of ICESoft, talks about the dangers of using multiple Ajax toolkits on the client. (6 minutes 15 seconds)

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About the authors

Frank Sommers is Editor-in-Chief of Artima Developer. He also serves as chief editor of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing's newsletter, and is an elected member of the Jini Community's Technical Advisory Committee. Prior to joining Artima, Frank wrote the Jiniology and Web services columns for JavaWorld.

Bill Venners is president of Artima, Inc. He is author of the book, Inside the Java Virtual Machine, a programmer-oriented survey of the Java platform's architecture and internals. His popular columns in JavaWorld magazine covered Java internals, object-oriented design, and Jini. Bill has been active in the Jini Community since its inception. He led the Jini Community's ServiceUI project, whose ServiceUI API became the de facto standard way to associate user interfaces to Jini services. Bill also serves as an elected member of the Jini Community's initial Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), and in this role helped to define the governance process for the community.