The latest release, Enterprise AJAX 4, comes with the following notable features:
- Integration support for Third Party Widgets : Enterprise AJAX 4 provides support for integration between widgets from different third parties such as Google, Yahoo and Dojo. This obviates the need to write plumbing JavaScript code to make these widgets work together.
- Dual API support: Developers can choose either Javascript or an XML API to develop their rich user interfaces.
- Structured Development: The architecture of the framework is based on reusable object oriented patterns and multiple inheritance support to facilitate better code maintainability.
In a press release, Gerbert Kaandorp, CTO of Backbase, emphasized Third Party Widget Support as a significant feature:
“The new support for third party components is a significant move toward making the different Ajax technologies work together. The new framework operates as a truly open platform, allowing developers to enrich their applications with the Ajax widgets and components of their choice.”
With web applications increasingly relying on AJAX to develop rich user interfaces, Enterprise AJAX does seem to provide a feature set much needed by the AJAX development community and we should expect more such products in future. Eclipse Rich AJAX Platform (RAP) is another such project, which is currently under incubation.