Asynchronous Processing in Ajax Apps

Dietrich Kappe, Friday, April 14, 2006 @ 9:00 am

Most web applications are still request driven, i.e. the browser makes a request and backend state is updated as a response to that request. There is some backend processing, but usually that processing is very losely coupled with the webapp, updating a backend data store.

Many more advanced apps make use of web services, MDB's, JMS, and other approaches to perform asynchronous processing. The need for asynchronous processing in webapps has been mostly confined to some special cases, requiring extreme scalability or performance. But now with the advent of Ajax, many new webapps are going to have to perform ongoing background processing in order to update front end displays. Some of these processes are going to exceed the time you want an XHR to be open. Or maybe you want to perform some backend processing tightly coupled to the session and UI, rather than loosely tied to the persistent store.

I've used open source tools like Mule, ActiveMQ and the like for some of these things. It does make life a bit easier when doing async processing, but moving to these new technologies will involve a bit of a learning curve for most webapp developers. Sorry, guys, the pain isn't over.

Topics: Ajax Performance, Application Architecture, Application Development, Web Development

Comments (1)

Software Development

Comments: 1 so far

I just wanted to let you know I really like your blog, its direction, and the topics you’re covering. And, I had to register for a typepad id before leaving this comment, so you know I mean it.

Keep it up! Cheers, Scott

Comment by scott, Friday, April 14, 2006 @ 2:52 pm

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