AJAX and Java Use Growing Among Programmers

If you’ve ever driven west across the Great Plains and caught your first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains, they don’t look that impressive from 75 miles away. But as time goes on and you get closer to them, they slowly begin to overpower the landscape. According to Evans Data, which recently released its latest Web Services Development Survey, Web services with Web 2.0 interfaces are on the rise much like the approaching Rockies.

Of particular note in this survey is the increased use of AJAX, the development technology that combines Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and that is a key component of the so-called Web 2.0 “next generation ” Internet software architecture. Nearly 50 percent of developers responding to this survey say they are working with AJAX or plan to do so in the coming year. John Andrews, president of Evans Data, says Web services and AJAX are on an upward trend, and he calls AJAX “the means to make Web-based applications function more like desktop ones.”

Evans Data also reports the use of REST (Representational State Transfer) is also climbing. Results from the survey indicate a 37 percent increase in respondents implementing or considering REST, with one out of four surveyed saying that they are considering REST-Based Web Services as a simpler alternative to SOAP-based services.

Other findings from the survey of almost 400 managers and developers:

• Reuse is rising. Three out of 10 survey respondents say the capability to reuse the service is the greatest cost advantage to Web services. The number of respondents sharing Web Services with two or more business units is up 20 percent since the last survey.
• Despite rampant industry speculation to the contrary, the adoption of the Java platform is poised for a significant increase. Three out of four companies expect to be working with Java by next year, a 12 percent jump from current levels.

IBM, in February, applied some of its heft to build an open source community around AJAX. In May, we reported that 13 new members had been added, including Adobe, SAP, and TIBCO, bringing the total number of participants to 28. The founding members include: BEA, Borland, Google, Mozilla, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo, and Zend Technologies.

The first AJAX World Conference and Expo is scheduled for October 3 through 5 in San Jose, California.