How Ajax Works With J2EE And Scripting Languages	3.3/5.0 (3 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Anne Catherine November 12, 2007

Here I am going to discuss the benefits of the Ajax application using J2EE and scripting and the advantage of using them together.

Ajax with Java2EE

Ajax, together with J2EE makes your application accessible to whole J2EE platform stack which also includes new and updated web services and database access technologies. You get Servlets, JSP technology, and Java Standard Tag Library (JSTL) in the stack's web tier. Additionally, JavaServer Faces technology 1.2, which is a framework for building rich user interfaces (UIs) for web applications, is also accompanied with these tools. This absolute combination of Ajax & J2EE provides a sophisticated & extensible component model to control events, convert and validate data, and run component state. Moreover, it offers a navigation model to control page flow and a managed bean facility for binding components to scoped beans.

JavaServer Faces technology not only offers you the extra server-side functionality you need for Ajax, but also eases the addition of Ajax to your application. Rather than embedding the JavaScript technology directly in the page, you can simply encapsulate it inside a Java Server Faces component. The ease of its use enables you experience all the benefits that the JavaServer Faces component model provides you.

Even if JSP technology is used without JavaServer Faces technology, Ajax functionality can still be encapsulated using custom tags. Together with the rest of the J2EE platform stack, the JSP and JavaServer Faces technologies endows you with everything you require for completing the server-side picture of your Ajax-enabled web application.

Dynamic Languages for Web Application Development

Although all J2EE components are written in Java programming language, but irrespective of all the benefits, scripting languages are preferred in recent years by many application developers. These scripting languages have been found to allow for more rapid development. When Ajax functionality is used for more interactive web applications, developers cannot ignore the importance of the rapid development that scripting languages offer.

Scripting languages possess a feature of dynamic typing that promotes rapid development. Because of this feature, developers find scripting languages more suitable for building rapidly evolving systems, connecting different components, and extending existing software components. Additionally, developers realize that they can often write fewer lines of code while programming with dynamic languages. Scripting languages don’t require a separate compilation step, which enables developers to deploy an application without compiling it, allowing them to manipulate the code while it is running without redeployment.

While developing Ajax-enabled applications, you also benefit by using the same scripting language on the client and the server if you use JavaScript technology on the server side. As scripting languages are appropriate for connecting and extending existing components, it can be of high use for developers who want to incorporate Ajax to existing applications.

Java2EE and Dynamic Languages Together: A Perfect Application

J2EE and Dynamic Languages if used in combination can give a flawless application as lone use of dynamic languages can create complications sometimes because the code may not be deciphered by other developers. In most cases, the code is executed to see what it does and understand it. Another problem is faced because of absence of compilation step that results in reduced execution speed as a result of the additional runtime checks. These errors in the code are otherwise caught at compilation step while making more robust applications. These problems highlight the importance of Java programming language.

To extract the best advantage out of both, you can use the Java programming language for least altered parts of the application, like graphical user interface (GUI) components, and parts with a performance bottleneck, such as methods that perform complex calculations or manipulate huge amounts of data. Scripting can be of best use for linking these parts of an application.

By this time, you must be aware of Ajax, its use with J2EE & Scripting languages as well as the benefits you can enjoy. Next time, we will discuss few negatives & positives of using Ajax for developing applications.