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AJAX is perhaps one of the hottest buzzwords in web development. I first saw AJAX in action in google mail. When I clicked one of my emails, only the bottom pane refreshed and displayed the email content. I was really amazed and instantly thought of the person who invented this technique.

According to mr. wickipedia “The first use of the term in public was by Jesse James Garrett in February 2005. Garrett thought of the term while in the shower, when he realized the need for a shorthand term to represent the suite of technologies he was proposing to a client.”

So what does Ajax mean? Its not a brand of soap which we are all familiar with. AJAX stands for “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML” . The word “Asynchronous” means irregular or not synchronized. In computer communications, the term is usually applied to data transmitted irregularly rather than as a steady stream. Meaning it has a lot more to do with user interaction. As another example, consider a telephone and a ham radio. The telephone is asynchronous because you can talk whenever you like even when the other party is talking. However, when using the ham radio, you need to wait for the other party to stop speaking or to release the talk button before you can get the chance to talk again. The operation of a ham radio is said to be synchronized.

In an Ajax application the same thing happens with your page. You can see the result of a certain pane or region you want to see in your page without refreshing the whole page. A good example would be a simple text box name lookup. Whenever you type an entry, the page refreshes only that part which shows the relevant information. This information is dynamically retrieve by the page from the server.

It is easy to see that AJAX saves you a lot of bandwidth because you only download the data that changes and not the whole page. Furthermore, the web UI becomes more responsive as you don’t have to wait a long time for that part to refresh as compared to the whole page being refreshed.

However, AJAX is a new technology and as such is not supported in older browsers. It is supported only IE version 6 and the latest versions of Mozilla. Also, different browsers have some slightly different implementations of AJAX, so whenever you develop in AJAX, you should tailor it to the browser used by the user. AJAX also breaks the back button support: data is reset when the back button is pressed.

AJAX is a simple yet extremely powerful technology. With a little creativity, you can already do a lot to make your page highly interactive. To see how simple AJAX is, see the sample code below.

You only need to know one Javascript object, namely the XMLHttpRequest. To send a request, you specify the request method and the path relative to the server. The third parameter to the “open” method is a Boolean to specify whether the request is asynchronous or not. You should specify “true” for this parameter. When the server response is received, you can get the response as a string from the req.responseText variable.

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What is dead that needs to be resurrected?

There was a time when dreaming big was an idyllic pre-occupation of mine. It was also a time I recall wherein a chapter of my life is coming to a close and I knew will be a disastrously unhappy one. It will be a hard fall, I told myself then. In anticipation of the impending pain, I asked myself over and over, what needs to done or what could to I do to cushion the impact of the fall? Eureka, a serendipitous moment gave me my answer: Amber!

How could a pre-historic, rare brownish orange hardened resin provide me the mattress that can soften the fall and will not break me completely? Good question. As a matter of metaphor, Amber, if you have watched or read Crichton’s Jurassic Park is that orange crystal-like thing that encapsulated and thus preserved by accident a mosquito filled with dinosaur blood, henceforth securing the present an adulterated copy of their DNA – so the story goes. The idea is my lifesaver, you will know in a while.

Excited, I rushed on to build Amber in 2003. If you don’t mind please allow me to give you a slight detour. Kindly indulge and take time to visit http://jboxim.dev.java.net. I tried to push completing it up to Beta stage so that I could sell it to the right market (say, in Sandhill St.) in 2005, but lost steam due to lack of funds. Dragging the development slowly up to summer of 2006, a second persistent call from a friend working with a huge IT firm conveying a job offer compelled me to shelf the project for the time being. At that junction, I have completed armorex, a complementary project that will provide the Amber-like protection (cryptographic) to the core Amber object.

Now that 2006 is almost over, the same friend encourages me to give it another try even if I am now technically on a leash courtesy of the giant IT firm – a bigger vessel so to speak whose core driver is to satisfy a client by running some of their business operations. A smaller ship, however, like www.javaero.org, a non-profit NGO is more than willing to back me up by hosting the project while we all pool our expertise in a collaborative community setting. The vision is to keep this smaller ship anchored unto the bigger ship for the meantime. Making sure that we can steward the bigger ship accordingly to where it wants to head and our smaller boat will just tag along where we can freely use our skills to help increase the knowledge capital of the younger students at the marginal sector of our society and at the same time do something that the World will need (if not now, ultimately).

The Amber resurrection will require a face-lift from the ground-up. Expect a new look, functionality and coverage that is far-ranging. Talk of J2EE, J2ME, AJAX, JSF, MAVEN, Eclipse, Netbeans, SOA and AI, these are the core technologies that we will leverage in order to give Amber a new lease of life. An abtract design for the new and improved Amber will be posted here soon, so keep on staying tuned.

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Rich Internet Application is a web-based thin-client with a rich-user interface that is event-driven in a paradoxically stateless container such as HTML in a web browser that can hook-up agnostically into n-tier services.  Such a challenge can only be realized through the asynchronous capability of the XMLHttpRequest javascript function also more popularly known as AJAX.  Keeping in mind that javascript is not Java per se, the Google developers provided a Java API for non-javascript programmers to effectively develop AJAX without learning its nooks-and-crannies.  This API is called the Google Windowing Toolkit.  To use it, the developer is expected only to be familiar with Swing basically, and voila, a potential to develop an RIA in the class and standards in some respects to Google mail, Yahoo mail or both their Map programs.  Any Java IDE from Sun’s Netbeans 5.5 or IBM’s Eclipse 3.2.1 may be used to develop an RIA using GWT.  However, the quickest way for a would-be AJAX programmer to using GWT would be to go to http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/gettingstarted.html.  A more sophisticated developer may also opt to using a 3^rd party Netbeans module plugin that can recognize an eclipse GWT project for importation to NB.

During the 2^nd Javaero break-in session, yours truly presented how to kickoff a “Hello World” GWT project using Eclipse.  I also showed how to extend it and demonstrated its other built-in widgets.  I will be presenting a more advanced in content GWT topic in our soon to be announced first ever roadshow this November in a University in Laguna.  We will post the details as soon as we get it finalized here in this site, so please stay tuned folks.

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The first principle of war is deception.

In a business setting, deception can be misconstrued to be synonymous with loosened integrity; but on the contrary, the interpretation is rather corrupt. Sun Tzu himself was very particular with the moral standards of the sovereign and its leaders – whereby maintaining truthfulness and political correctness all the time is the right way to go. No way can you inspire the multitudes with power alone; it must be supplemented with balanced magnanimity, benevolence and the truth.

Deception is as to a decoy which must be hidden with artistry, while integrity is to truthfulness which must be revealed for all to see.

The masterful use of deception or stealth can be applied in many ways in business, but I will only attempt to cite with two which both incidentally happened in recent history.

Competing corporations are always at odds with the products that they produce and eventually at least one will always surface to out-class the other in the end. For instance, one may publish their innovation ahead of everybody else in the race, hoping that the early pronouncement will give them a significant lead in the market. The other decides to counter the innovation and declares the solution to be leading in the wrong direction and thus will not follow their technology and will instead introduce innovation overtime. Meanwhile, the former corporation is picking-up in the market rather slowly. The market is reluctant to invest on the product of the former because the latter have produced a successful product in the past and so they wait in patience. Meanwhile, the former corporation scrambles to allocate another substantial funding to their R&D to come-up with another probable (guess) solution that the latter may also be working on. After several months, the latter corporation announces their new efficiently and better product but it uses exactly the same technology as that of the former. The market reacted positively and bought more of the latter’s product than that from the former.

Another infamous but successful use of deception was when a relatively unknown software maker bluffed its way into making a giant computer company believe that they have the software that the latter needs which consequently made the former become the wealthiest software corporation in the World today.
Take a break story…

After writing The Art of War, Sun Wu was given an audience with the king of Wu. The king invited him to demonstrate his skill by training the court concubines. Sun Tzu accepted the challenge.
Sun Tzu explained the commands for marching, but when the drum signals were given, the women burst out laughing. Sun Tzu teaches that if the orders are not clear, the general is at fault. So he repeated his explanation, but the women only laughed again. Sun Tzu teaches that when the orders are clear but not followed, the officers are at fault. So Sun Tzu ordered the women’s commanders, the king’s two favorite concubines, beheaded.

After the two were executed and replaced, the remaining women obeyed the orders precisely. The king was too sickened by the deaths to watch the demonstrations, but he gave Sun Tzu command of his army.
Sun Tzu had a dramatic impact on Chinese history. After his hiring, the kingdom of Wu went on to become the most powerful state of the period.

An ineffective leader can always be replaced if he/she fails to meet the objectives of the corporate employer. This also applies to those resources that are under his/her domain.

“…the true object of war is peace.”

“… The main goal of business is winning (in terms of profits, gains, sales, etc.) Order and contentment is always the key objective.”

The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstance can it be neglected.

The business stratagem or tactic is also an art of winning is of vital importance to any corporation. It is a matter of success and failure, a path that can lead either to profit or loss. Hence under no circumstance can it be neglected.
Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results. Spies are a most important element in war, because upon them depends an army’s ability to move.

Hence it is only the enlightened Executive and the wise Manager who will use the highest intelligence of the employees for purposes of research and learning new skills, techniques, and thereby they achieve great results. Researchers are a most singular element in business, because upon them depends a corporation’s ability to decide what move to make.

Some executive of late even take lengths to hire private investigators in order to spy on their employees, tap on their telecommunication lines and devices. Information technology is at any corporation’s disposal nowadays, for even a mere simple post of a resume in the Web can now be easily sensed or detected. It is however myopic on their part as they fail to see that it is every lowly resource’s right to dream of affluence.

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.

Supreme excellence consists in overcoming the challenges and delivering results without having to create conflict or make undue premature pronouncements.

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

If you are skillful with your job and know your limits you need not worry the result of a hundred new challenges, project initiatives or opportunities.

An enlightened corporation, who understands its existence, knows and trusts their resources’ capabilities, empowers them, lives in the highest moral values, will with certainty succeed and need not fear the challenges that lie ahead.

References:

1. Sun Tzu’s Art of War as interpreted by James Clavell the author of Taipan and Shogun.

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“Open sesame!” is the united toast of a group of IT professionals who recently had a meeting of minds to pitch into the cauldron their individual IT relevant skills and knowledge in order to cook a recipe of Java language and cutting-edge Computer or Information Science topics that can be taught in an open community setting.

The singular follow-through is this publicity page that conveys the obvious semantics of the classic C programming language’s typical first step statement that instructs to display into the standard output device the simple sentence “Hello World!”

And hello World indeed! This very simple yet compelling greeting sends a profound message that we are formally announcing this first step to kickoff our serious intent to carry out our mission statement.

The mission to educate the under-privileged in pro bono fashion within the short horizon is just one side of the coin, the other side is to develop a World class product in the far horizon that everyone will need or is compelled to have.

While still currently moored in safe harbor, JAVAERO is surreptitiously making strategic moves to ensure that when the full sails journey begins, there will be no turning back; our preparations are adequate, our way point plans are detailed to precision, our supplies sufficient for sustainability, and finally our human power capabilities sharpened and up-to-date.

In the mean time, moving forward with the group’s vision of running the entity as a self-sustaining Non-Government Organization (NGO), it will initially solicit funds and an assortment of skills from amongst its original founders while simultaneously looking for a worthy benefactor. Other funding sources are also currently being discussed.

The primary goal is simple; to educate the under-privileged youth in depressed preferably rural areas that plans or are interested to build their career in IT practice. In the longer term, scholarships and apprenticeships from donor/sponsor institutions may also be granted to deserving and promising candidates. And a pool of these resources can be processed for employment on allied IT institutions.

But the ultimate goal is to come up with an innovative project that will be developed as a useful product that is of World class quality. It may also solicit or even generate funds in order to fund technology projects for incubation and probably for commercial venture.

The organization’s name JAVAERO was coined to mean individuals who love the Java language. This term came from a Tagalog or Pilipino word “babaero” meaning men who likes women. It may also mean aero-dynamic Java or Java in the air.

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