It seems that AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) has gained an extensive momentum since Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive Path has coined the term back in February 2005. I take as another proof the fact that O'Reilly and Adaptive Path have teamed up for organizing the first AJAX Summit that took place in San Francisco on May 9-10, 2005 and whose main goal was to bring together a group of top developers and designers who were supposed to start shaping the future of AJAX. You can find a couple blog entries summarizing the highlights of the summit on the Ajaxian blog.

For the novices, two facts about AJAX are worth noting right away. First, AJAX is not a standalone technology, but more a term for refering to a group of several different technologies (Javascript, XML, CSS, HTML, XSLT, DHTML, etc.) that leverage each other's value in order to provide a bigger return than what would be achievable by each single technology in isolation. Secondly, the AJAX acronym is relatively new, but the technologies that make up the AJAX infrastructure are not. They have been around for quite some time now and people are discovering every day how well they complement each other and what wonders they can achieve when used efficiently. Judging by how much resources Google (Google Suggest, Google Maps, etc.) and Amazon (A9 search engine) have invested on the AJAX technology set for bringing Rich Internet Applications to the market, we can only wonder how big the full potential of AJAX is. The future will tell.

Recently, Backbase published a white paper titled "AJAX and Beyond" whose primary goal was to announce the first full-fledged commercial AJAX implementation. Judging by the information available in this white paper, it seems that their AJAX solution is quite mature and powerful. They provide both a Java and a .NET edition as well as a community edition that can be downloaded free of charge for any non-commercial use.

A dedicated entry for AJAX has also been created on Wikipedia and is being updated quite frequently from what I know. The open-source movement is not sleeping either. On Sourceforge, there are more than a dozen ongoing projects aiming at providing some sort of AJAX support for a great diversity of purposes, such as content management systems, asset management systems, Java widgeteries, tag libraries, web services support, and so on. Note that there are a few projects on Freshmeat as well. The JavaRSS syndication site has also provided an explanation page on how AJAX is used on their web site for bringing dynamic content live in an efficient way. Java.net have also updated their blueprint catalog in order to include some insightful information on how to integrate AJAX in a J2EE environment.

Finally, as it is usually the case, emerging trends have their proponents and opponents. In the latter group, we can find Macromedia Flash freaks who see AJAX as a threat to their Rich Internet Application solution. Johnnie Manzari's "Ajax: 99% bad" blog entry tries to demonstrate how bad AJAX is compared to Flash. My opinion is that at least AJAX is made up free and open technologies that are not evolving under one single corporate umbrella. This independence is one of the keys to a successful adoption. Flash is not bad and neither is AJAX. Both bring value and none of them are silver bullets. Smart people will just have to figure out which solution to use for solving the problem at hand. Let's not start another endless crusade about which technology is better or worse. Let's keep in mind that the technology is just there to support the business that runs on top of it and this is what really matters.

This being said, I'm convinced that AJAX is definitely here to stay and that it has most certainly not yet unleashed its full potential. If you want to get acquainted with this new trend that will heavily contribute to bridging the gap between the lightweight web applications and the rich client applications, you better don't wait too long in the starting blocks and start browsing a little bit. You can start from my Blogroll whose AJAX feeds are enumerated below: