The functionality of Ajax puts it ahead among the other web tools. Ajax not only builds a fast and dynamic website but also saves the resources. Unlike other web tool, it generates a rich-client application that uses the client’s computer for accessing data instead of sole server or network. Earlier the processing of web page used to hold only server-side before sending the whole page within the network.

On the other hand, Ajax can not only modify a portion of the page or even a single field displayed by the browser but can also update it without asking the remaining content to reload. For example: if user changes any filed in the form and uploads it, the changes display immediately in the form without showing any error or asking to reload other processed filed.

Defining Ajax

Ajax or AJAX is not a single technology but an amalgamation of several technologies that is being used to develop interactive web applications. It is some time referred to Asynchronous Javascript with added XML, which is used to enhance the interactivity, speed, functionality, and usability of the web pages.

Here, the term Asynchronous refers to functionality of the data processing in which user can perform the other request without interfering the backend processing and the desired output displays after ending the page-loading process. For example: if user makes any changes in any form written in Ajax and sends request for changing it through upload the page, the back-end data processing begins and again if during the processing user wants to make another change in the form, then there is no need for the user to wait until the process of page loading finishes. The
second made changes would be displayed on the screen.

So, Asynchronous AJAX stands for a combination of techniques that allows web pages to be more interactive and behave like local application that is also know as ‘Rich-Client’ application. In short, we can define Ajax as an asynchronous powerful technique that integrates:

• Standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS
• Data interchange with XML and XSLT
• Dynamic display and interaction of pages using through Document Object Model (DOM)
• Asynchronous server communication using XMLHttpRequest
• JavaScript to weave the net among one another

Advantages of Ajax

The biggest advantage of Ajax is its bandwidth usage because it generates HTML locally within the browser and does not require reloading the whole data after amending any portion of the programming. Its speedy response and tendency to share the client’s system for accessing content reduces the bandwidth consumption for web applications and server load.

The other foremost advantage is that it supports a wide range of operating system platform, computer architecture, browser and languages.

Disadvantages of Ajax
Despite of having several advantages, Ajax also has some common disadvantages and some of them are: