Development Track 2

Ajax – Putting a Face on SOA

John Crupi, CTO, JackBe

Ajax has the potential to be a disruptive force for traditional portals and middleware. The technology enables a total platform approach where Ajax is leveraged to extend SOA into the developing realm of Web-based business applications. This next generation of applications will run in the browser and directly connect to the SOA services using an enterprise platform; in doing so, these applications address the enterprise problem of how to simultaneously expose and govern SOA assets, enabling the user to punch through the traditional curtain of portals and heavyweight process engines. Without Ajax, it has simply been much too difficult for the business unit developer to consume and leverage the SOA services exposed by IT. What's been missing is an easy way to put a "face" on SOA, and that's precisely the benefit of using Ajax in combination with SOA. Attendees at this session will learn about the architecture required to create this new class of enterprise software and applications and the necessary governance for Ajax and SOA to coexist in the enterprise.

Developing Experiences Beyond the Browser

Christen Krogh, Vice President, Engineering, Opera Software

In the Web 2.0 world, designers and developers need to think about user experiences across all platforms and devices. While the desktop reigns supreme, the reach of the Internet grows to include mobile phones, gaming devices and set-top boxes. Developers need to be ready to further expand their applications. By respecting standards and keeping a variety of devices in mind, developers can innovate while maintaining ubiquity, ensuring they stay ahead of the curve while helping promote next-generation experiences with the broadest reach. This session will focus on developing next-generation Internet experiences that span from the desktop to the mobile world and discuss the importance of CSS, the use of Ajax on mobile phones, and the need to fight for creating a standards-based approach for Web 2.0.

Main points will include Web 2.0 introducing unique, advanced and personalized Web-based services; the full browser and Web-based, personalized mobile widgets combination that gives the user the best of both worlds; and the most flexible personalization option that also seamlessly integrates Web content with the phone's own applications through Ajax-based widgets. Perspective relative to the industry will also be covered, such as handsets becoming more browser-centric. Also, fragmentation and the lack of compelling services have hindered widespread adoption of data services. By using Web standards, you can create solutions that work across devices and platforms and present the user with concrete, compelling services in the form of mobile widgets and personalization of both form and content. When the user can choose which services and content to have readily available, and the speed of accessing and using them is as fast as if they were local applications, the boundaries between on- and offline content are blurred. Lastly, Web 2.0 enables a plethora of new and exciting Web-based services. Using Web technologies brings Web 2.0 to mobile technologies, where the use-cases are infinite.

Enterprise Mashup with Apache XAP Ajax Framework

Coach Wei, Chairman and CTO, Nexaweb Technologies

Enterprise Web 2.0 brings "mashup" capability to business computing — easier and more cost effective ways of delivering rich Ajax front ends that are driven by heterogeneous back-end data sources and business processes. Apache XAP is a declarative Ajax framework that is particularly suitable for enterprise mashup applications. This session will take a look at the challenges associated with Ajax development, the issues associated with SOA, and how Ajax and SOA can be connected. Theory and techniques that leverage open source projects, in particular, Apache XAP, will be discussed. This session will also look at how to build Ajax applications in a well-structured and manageable way that can scale to large development teams; how SOA and WOA fits together for business applications; Apache XAP and how it plugs into the general market toolkits and various open source offerings; how to build enterprise Web 2.0 mashup applications that connect SOA with Ajax; and visual development of mashup applications. Code and application examples will be presented.

Load Testing an Ajax Application: It's the Server, Stupid

Bryan Cole, Load Testing Subject Matter Expert, Compuware and
James Farley, Technical Specialist, Compuware

One of the most significant questions surrounding the production of Ajax applications is how well they will scale. At first glance it appears that they might do better than traditional Web applications because data transfers are smaller. However, the real question is the impact of smaller but more frequent transfers on the server. This session will discuss the factors that impact server performance and scalability on Ajax applications and demonstrate these concepts through the load testing of code.

Achieving Web 2.0 Collaboration Through Ajax Push

Ted Goddard, Senior Software Architect, ICESoft Technologies Inc.

New capabilities are emerging on the Web, and designers and developers need effective methods for applying their core strengths together. This session focuses on using and creating collaborative applications. We'll look at how the transformation in interaction design brought by Ajax Push delivers profound benefits to users but stretches Web infrastructure. We will illustrate the right methods for developers and designers to effectively create collaborative applications. What is a collaborative application? We'll demonstrate a multi-user slideshow and chat example that shows how application-initiated page update transforms the Web application into a new communication medium. How are collaborative applications deployed? We'll look under the hood to see how Ajax Push (aka "comet") bends the rules of the Web, demanding careful attention to server infrastructure.

PHP Powers Mashups

John Herren, Developer Evangelist, Zend Technologies

Whether you're building a snazzy Web 2.0 site or a corporate B2B back channel, PHP has you covered for all of your Web service needs. This session dives into Web services head-on, tackling the tag soup that is SOAP, XML-RPC, REST, JSON and more. Discover the built-in features of PHP 5 that make consuming and creating Web services as trivial as common database access, and learn how open source software such as the Zend Framework allows you to concentrate on the business side of Web services instead of nitpicky, low-level, communication protocols. We will discuss best practices for developing, debugging and monitoring mashups, and show live demos implementing services from Yahoo!, Flickr, Amazon, eBay and Google using a half-dozen lines of code.

The Four Quantum States of Ajax

Kevin Hakman, Director and Cofounder TIBCO General Interface, TIBCO

To purists, Ajax is about communicating asynchronously from the browser using JavaScript and XML, nothing more. To others, through their experiences with Google Maps and Yahoo!'s new email offering, Ajax represents a desktop-like GUI that leverages the preexisting HTML, DHTML, and vector-based rendering capabilities of the browser. Accordingly, it's likely that developers will continue to use it for a broad spectrum of uses. It's therefore important to understand the "quantum states" the term has taken on. This session will examine four quantum states of Ajax in an effort to tease apart and classify the plethora of Ajax technologies available today: communication libraries, user-interface components, rich Internet application frameworks and RIA frameworks with robust visual tooling. Though deconstructing Ajax, Kevin will help participants determine which of these Ajax incarnations makes the most sense for them.

Panel: Does Ajax Have a Future?

Christen Krogh, Vice President, Engineering, Opera Software
Christophe Coenraets, Senior Technology Evangelist, Adobe Systems
John Crupi, CTO, JackBe
Moderator: Peter Varhol, Editor in Chief, FTPOnline, Fawcette Technical Publications Inc.

Ajax has changed the development paradigm for Web applications, making those applications more interactive and responsive to user needs. However, the technologies involved are not new; they are established techniques and languages used in innovative ways. Does this mean Ajax is a transitional development approach that will lead to entirely new techniques, or is the fundamental approach here to stay? This panel will discuss the future of Ajax, debating its ability to adapt to new mainstream application requirements.

Managing the Performance of Real-World Ajax Applications

Ryan Breen, Vice President, Technology, Gomez Inc.

This session will explore the challenges relating to operational support of Ajax applications as contrasted against traditional page-by-page applications. Attendees will learn how to model application performance in terms of business processes rather than pages. Real-world anecdotes from the field will be used to exemplify best practices.

Writing Mashups Using Microsoft Virtual Earth

Peter Varhol, Editor in Chief, FTPOnline, Fawcette Technical Publications Inc.

Mashups that combine data, logic and presentation of multiple applications into a single view are providing ways of getting unique views of information into the hands of analysts and decision makers. Geographic mashups are particularly valuable because the whole is more than the sum of the parts. That is, activity and location data combined are far more effective than both provided separately. Microsoft's Virtual Earth Map Control provides an easy and powerful way of accessing geographical data for use in geographic applications. This session will focus on how to use the Map Control and other digital data to create geographic mashups.