The Keene View on Web 2.0, Ajax and SaaS

You can't swing a dead cat at a Web 2.0 conference these days without hitting a dozen Rich Internet Application (RIA) toolkits. The Olliance Group recently identified 58 RIA products, many of them either proprietary or incompatible with the other 57 approaches.

Just to set the stage, here is my personal definition for a Rich Internet Application:

"Rich Internet Applications match the responsiveness of traditional desktop apps by minimizing web page refreshes. RIA taps into the collective power of the Internet to supply widgets and services for building web clients, like rss feeds, Google maps and Youtube. The goal of RIA is not merely to emulate a PC GUI in a browser (aka the Silverlight sell-out), but to deliver browser-based clients which far outperform PC GUIs in speed and functionality."

Ajax* is a particular architecture for building RIAs that is favored by open source libraries such as Dojo, Jquery, Ext and dozens of others. The perpetual flamewars between adherents of the various Ajax toolkits is a huge gift for the proprietary RIA products like Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flex.

Many Ajax toolkits seem more focused on posting esoteric animated graphics widgets to the Ajaxian web site than they are on meeting mundane but critical enterprise needs. To be fair, whizzy graphics are an important element of RIA's appeal. However there are more fundamental concerns to address before RIA can be considered enterprise-ready.

Into this maelstrom of splintered efforts comes the Dojo 1.0 release. Dojo has been in development for 3 years, making it one of the more mature toolkits available. Dojo also has the backing of IBM, BEA and Sun and will ship standard with their Java servers.

Previous versions of Dojo were criticized as being too big and too slow. Dojo 1.0 attempts to address those issues. Even more importantly, Dojo has also addressed a number of the hard issues required to gain enterprise adoption:

1. Internationalization and accessibility: Dojo supports localization, keyboard navigation and vision-impaired users, making it appropriate for both global businesses and government applications.


2. Excellent data handling: the Dojo grid (plug: built by ActiveGrid's own Scott Miles and Steve Orvell) easily handles 100,000+ rows with dynamic loading and complex rows, making it suitable for building the most data-intensive web clients.


3. Interoperability: Dojo supports the OpenAjax hub, making it possible for an enterprise to integrate and support web applications built with different Ajax toolkits.


4. Corporate look and feel: Dojo supports the ability to define a corporate look and feel or skin that can be used across a set of applications.

Although choice in general is good, no CIO wants to be stuck supporting a dozen squabbling Ajax toolkits a year from now. Dojo 1.0 may not be the ultimate winner, but it sets clear expectations for what an enterprise-ready Ajax toolkit should be able to do.

*Ajax is an acronym for Asynchronous Javascript And XML (only the acronym Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Aparatus can approach Ajax in shear implausibility).

Labels: AJAX, DOJO, Ext, Flex, JQuery, OpenAjax, Silverlight

Over the next few months, almost everything about the company-currently-know-as-ActiveGrid will undergo dramatic transformation. We are announcing the first step in this transformation on Monday with our acquisition of a top Dojo tool provider, TurboAjax.

TurboAjax brings an incredibly cool Dojo widget builder and equally talented developers into ActiveGrid. We first saw their products on July 26 and had a signed Letter of Intent exactly one week later - probably a land speed record for software acquisitions!

This acquisition also lands us at the center of the Dojo community of AJAX developers. Why Dojo? Well, we are targeting the enterprise, where internationalization and security are critical. We believe Dojo is creating the best UI toolkit for enterprise developers.

Earlier this week I waxed eloquent on the flaws in proprietary non-AJAX solutions like Silverlight, Flex and JavaFX. However it is also fair to point out that there are many challenges within the open source AJAX community as well, including:

• Lack of commercial support: without the availability of commercial support, AJAX will not achieve enterprise adoption. With this acquisition, ActiveGrid will now stand behind both the TurboAjax products and the Dojo Toolkit.


• Missing features: common complaints around the Dojo toolkit include lack of complete documentation and robust samples. If AJAX toolkits are to be adopted, they need the same polish as proprietary solutions like Flex.


• Inconsistent standards: as the saying goes, the nice thing about AJAX standards is that there are so many to choose from. There is an alphabet soup of Javascript libraries out there, including JQuery, Prototype, Rico, Scriptaculous, Ext and YUI. Each of these takes a very different approach to solving the same problem.


• Security: don't even get me started on the security challenges in an environment full of widgets, gadgets and 3rd party web services. Suffice it to say that when this rock gets turned over, lots of ugly stuff creepy-crawly things will slither out.

The AJAX world needs a RedHat to create a common distribution and provide commercial support and training behind an enterprise-ready toolkit. With our TurboAjax acquisition, ActiveGrid is taking an important first step down this path. Stay tuned for our next move!

Labels: AJAX, DOJO, Ext, JQuery, Prototype, YUI