When I first heard about AJAX I had a twofold feeling : first I was amazed and second I got angry. Why that? Because once again my company managed to be a technology leader without telling anybody in the world, as has happened a couple of times in our past with unimportant things like three-tier client server. But this is another story.That may sound to you like we already have AJAX available? You are right! But first of all for the convenience of people reading this without knwoing what I'm talking about at all, some background about AJAX.
AJAX is the acronym for Asynchronous Javascript and XML and entitles a front end technology that lately got large attention by the HTML and Java community. Even here at SDN we had already a couple of blogs about AJAX like Tron Stroemme's AJAX and htmlb - a sample BSP application or Daniel McWeeney's How-To: Create AJAX Applications in SAP. Most funny to me was an answer to Daniel's weblog that was,
"The most important benefit that Ajax provides is response to a client side event without posting or reloading the whole page which is the case with server side sripting technologies like JSP, BSP, ASP etc. So its far more efficient and also improves the user experience in terms of not refreshing the whole page."
Anybody got an idea where I want to lead you?
Does anybody ever listen to TechEd sessions or read articles we all put a lot of effort in?
Hello?
HELLO?
Frontend Javascript and a framework that sends data back and forth via XML?
Never heard about this? Didn't we TEACH you for the last damn four YEARS? This is *ridiculous*! YOU...
Ok. Once you start shouting at customers it's time for a break. Even in Germany, the country lately known as the "service desert".
What I'm talking about is the most important front end technology SAP released with NetWeaver, the famous Web Dynpro.
Yes, it does Javascript.
Yes, it does use XML to forward data between frontend and backend.
No, it doesn't let you fumble around with Javascript.
And that maybe why nobody gets into this idea. Most programmers mean Javascript programming when talking about AJAX. And this is the big difference between AJAX and Web Dynpro. Unfortunately Javascript has some major drawbacks (which I have some experience with, when I tried to write a Javascript rich text editor before this was implemented in browsers):
- It's not a 'real' programming language, as it's name says more for scripting and this means it allows awkward programming style
- Using it for frontend programming means for most programmers: learning a new language
- Different browsers use different dialects of Javascript. This leads to intensive testing with different browsers for all code written.
- There is no security concept to encrypt the data traveling between the front and back end
These drawbacks can be worked around by using libraries, of course. Well, nothing else you are doing when using Web Dynpro - with the extension that you never have to use any kind of Javascript, as all of it is generated for you.
