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Integrating AJAX/Active Clients into Java Web Applications

X457.4 (2 semester units in EECS)

Java server-side technologies offer a wide variety of approaches, including relatively mature frameworks like Struts based on the Model 2 controller architecture, as well as template-based page generation and object-relational mapping toolkits. However, these applications can be limited by the relatively rudimentary style and invariant "click to wait" pattern of their user interfaces. That's why AJAX and related techniques—using DHML and XMLHttp Request to enable richer and more responsive, seamless user interfaces—have sparked such intense interest in the Java community.

The purpose of this course is to survey approaches to integrating AJAX and similar active-client mechanisms with existing and emerging Java-based Web applications. First comes a review of background Web technologies, including HTTP, HTML, XML, XSLT, DOM, and JavaScript. Then you get a jumpstart on using JavaScript and AJAX in simple examples. After a survey to compare and contrast common Java-based Web frameworks and toolkits, the main portion of the course works through a series of case studies including Struts and Cocoon on the server side, and XSLT or tag libraries as well as JavaScript on client side. You compare and contrast the same server-side implementation with different active-client designs, and the same active-client implementations with different server-side designs. Evaluation criteria include richness of features, ease of understanding and maintainability, interoperability, compatibility with server-side architectures, and performance.

On completing this course, you should be able to recognize when it would be appropriate to add AJAX or similar techniques to an existing or planned Java-based Web application; evaluate which design approaches and tools/libraries are most suitable for a given situation; and debug, validate, and estimate performance characteristics of the application.

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Tues. June 10, San Francisco