Group29.com - What did you expect? - AJAX vs. CORBA? Delivering info to your browser

AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML for web development

On the latest version of Microsoft's Technology Incubation Page They advertise that they are looking for AJAX Developers. It stands to reason because two of the most interesting web applications today are Google GMAIL and Google Maps which use AJAX programming methods. The Google Map page is an interesting example of an AJAX application. You can drag the map and new pictures fill in, but your never see the browser making the requests.

You might think that you could substitute AJAX engine with "CORBA Object Request Broker". And you also might think that AJAX looks a lot like what CORBA offered with its technology running in the browser. There are important differences though. CORBA uses a binary transport (IIOP) and true object-oriented method calls. Ajax uses text-based XML over HTTP, AJAX is not necessarily an object oriented programming method.

CORBA was a hot topic in the .com boom in 1998 because it was thought that Java Applets in the browser with CORBA links to servers would rule the world. That never came to pass, But CORBA was a mantra for IT zealots for two years. If your RFP response did not have a satisfactory answer for CORBA API, you could get thrown out of the project bidding process.

This Dilbert Cartoon appeared on the Dilbert Calendar about that time:

Saint Dogbert enters the land of cubicles searching for demons of stupidity. Suddenly he finds an over-promoted computer guru spouting useless database concepts. "You'd be fools to ignore the boolean anti-binary least square approach." The monster is dispatched to the dark world by the sight of its most feared object. "Look! Actual Code!" ("Cool!")

I made a large copy to hang on my cube and substituted "CORBA Application Server" over a whited out "boolean anti-binary least square approach." It got laughs for months.

CORBA is the acronym for Common Object Request Broker Architecture, OMG's open, vendor-independent architecture and infrastructure that computer applications use to work together over networks. Using the standard protocol IIOP, a CORBA-based program from any vendor, on almost any computer, operating system, programming language, and network, can interoperate with a CORBA-based program from the same or another vendor, on almost any other computer, operating system, programming language, and network.

More about CORBA: http://www.omg.org/gettingstarted/

CORBA was ahead of its time in my opinion, and was not suited to rapid application development. The JAVA applet implementation seemed to be a solution in search of a problem. CORBA is robust, but overly complex. CORBA is suited to multiple application servers where each server is dedicated to suppling a particular computation. It could be some of the glue that holds the supercomputing process together. Whereas AJAX is suited to a particular problem: I need to pull updates to web documents without doing a link request. I want to dynamically update based upon interaction on the client browser application.

The keys to AJAX are:
1.) DOM: The Document Object Model is manipulated through JavaScript to dynamically display and interact with the information presented.

2.) XMLHTTP: eXtended Markup Language HyperText Transfer Protocol is a set of APIs that can be used by JavaScript, JScript, VBScript and other web browser scripting languages to transfer XML or other data to and from a web server using HTTP. The biggest advantage of XMLHTTP is the ability to dynamically update a webpage without reloading the entire webpage or using software plugins.

Here is where you can keep tabs on the Start team. http://spaces.msn.com/members/startcom/

Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

AJAX.NET blog
http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/

AJAX.NET download