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NFJS2025

Judging AJAX Frameworks with REST

AJAX is a powerful enabling technology for Web applications today, but today there is too much choice with too little useful criteria to make educated decisions from. This presentation uses three properties from the REST Architectural Style (Modifiability, Visibility, Portability) to judge the short and long-term implications of choosing an AJAX frameworks. Not all AJAX frameworks play by the rules of the Web, knowing these risks up-front will enable better choices in framework selection.

This presentation first introduces both AJAX and REST:

  • AJAX: From “pages” to asynchronous Web requests
  • Server and client-side AJAX Framework examples
  • Intro to REST: Properties, Constraints, and the Uniform Interface

The criteria used to judge AJAX Frameworks is

  • Time to Release (for AJAX exposing pre-existing code)
  • Modifiability
  • Visibility
  • Portability

A selection of server and client-side AJAX Frameworks will be interactively demonstrated and judged according to these criteria. Both code and on-the-wire data with be shown interactively to demonstrate each framework.


John Heintz

About John Heintz

Agile/Kanban coach, REST architect, software craftsman

John D. Heintz is a husband, father, developer, Agilist, entrepreneur. After studying electrons in college, John's intuition led him to pursue software, and he's been a digital craftsmen since. Always seeking solutions with higher leverage and deeper simplicity has led John to important methods and tools. John's approach to building systems and teams started with leading his first Scrum team in 1999, included XP and TDD, and now Agile and Lean methods are part of his daily work and consulting. John has built single-source hyperdocument SGML publishing systems, a version control CORBA/Python CMS, an AspectJ dependency acquisition framework, added test automation to many Java and .NET systems, coached a 100-person Agile/Lean game studio, and built RESTful Web integration systems. John has launched his own company, Gist Labs, to further his focus on essential innovation.

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