The group has decided that it will not be a standards body, but will instead operate in a manner similar to WS-I, the Web Services Interoperability Organization.
Its goals are to identify and consolidate best practices, then define consensus programming models around a reference Ajax implementation, so Ajax tools can interoperate.
The first two initiatives are to fashion a declarative XML language that would serve as an intermediary for tools to write to, in order to generate the JavaScript runtime. In so doing, it would define APIs for widgets, event handlers, and other features of Ajax tools to map.
The hope is that a common syntax for specifying Ajax features and behaviors could emerge so tooling and runtimes could become interoperable.
Additionally, the group formally renamed itself the OpenAjax Alliance and got the ball rolling to set up a website where white papers and other documentation from members could be found, and gained consensus on a rough definition of Ajax itself.
Twenty-four companies out of a total of 31 members each sent a pair of representatives to a hastily arranged meeting at Adobe Inc’s offices.
The group itself has been somewhat of a moving target, with membership growing rapidly. On May 9, the organization announced nine new members, including Adobe, SAP, Software AG, and Tibco. Since the JavaOne meeting, three more companies have announced their intentions to join.
At this point, the most prominent remaining holdout is Microsoft Corp, which ironically invented the DHTML component of Ajax technology and promotes its own Ajax flavor, called Project Atlas.
The name change came about in part because the domain OpenAjax.org was already taken, and because the organization felt that alliance would more accurately describe its structure. As for the definition of Ajax, the group started with the Wikipedia definition and modified it in only a handful of places.
The Wikipedia entry states that Ajax is a development technique for creating interactive web applications that use a group of technologies already in browsers, so plug-ins are not required.
It includes HTML or XHTML (where XML is used for generating HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS); ECMAscript-based scripting languages (such as JavaScript or Microsoft’s Jscript) for interacting with DOM document objects on the web page; and XML or alternatives like preformatted HTML for transferring data between server and client.
According to David Boloker, CTO for IBM’s Emerging Internet Technology Software Group, the definition is not totally cast in concrete, but instead, provides a view of the membership companies’ thoughts on what Ajax is.
As for the focus on programming models, the goal is to develop compatibility between commercial and open source Ajax tools that have until now evolved largely in a vacuum.
If you use multiple Ajax toolkits, today they don’t share the [web] page very well, said Boloker, noting that each set of tools has different sets of event handlers and widgets.
The lack of interoperability would cause the demise of Ajax, said John Crupi, CTO of fellow member JackBe.
One possibility could be identifying reference implementations, such as XAP, a proposed XML syntax developed by Nexaweb now being considered by Apache to provide the missing declarative language that could accept multiple Ajax tooling dialects as personalities.
In essence, the group has a bit of a below-the-radar, ad hoc quality. For starters, the site and timing for the JavaOne meeting was set only days beforehand. Members hope to avoid politically divisive issues like setting standards, developing new technology, or releasing open source that would compete with member offerings.
For now, the mood of participants is still clearly very idealistic, and possibly naive. Most hope that the lawyers don’t get too heavily involved, the group remains as informal as possible, and sights are kept realistically modest.
We don’t want to redesign Web 2.0. We won’t build an open source stack, and we won’t be a product group, said Boloker. Added Crupi, the group’s mission should restrict itself to promoting de facto standards that would be enforceable primarily through peer pressure.
Yet some members hope the group aims its shots a bit higher. This provides the opportunity for the Java community to come out with its own response to Microsoft XAML, said Jouk Pleiter, general manager of Backbase, another Ajax tools company.
Boloker, who was CTO of Java for IBM during J2EE’s formative days, sees parallels with that bygone era, where there was a sense of mission to develop a common platform.
We’re even working with some of the same people, like Scott Dietzen, referring to the CTO of Zimbra, whose previous claim to fame was at BEA.
