AHAH vs. AJAX. ROUND 1. FIGHT!

AJAX and AHAH are two of the corner stones of the technology for “Web 2.0″. While most implementations of AHAH are done using AJAX to make them more robust I see them as two differing models. In essence AHAH requires the minimum of client side processing whereas AJAX uses the client for processing as well as rendering.

The reason I find this interesting is because of a conversation we had a my work about how to optimise some AJAX by using either an XML data source or a JSON one. The discussion about the best way to deal with parse trees in the browser made me wonder if most of the “Web 2.0″ site really need it at all.

The implementation of AHAH I like is one which wraps some HTML in a JSON object along with a status code. The application then requests data to render, using the status code to define how it renders it, either as a valid return or as an error. This minimal logic approach avoids the parsing and speed issues on the client, and instead makes the optimisation barrier the HTTP request and the server response time.

I would say that in all but the most hyper-functional of applications the amount of interaction a user does, with the amount of data the server can return in a given request means that this option is most preferable. Really only the spreadsheet, datagrid, etc type application can anticipate the data the user will need next and in volumes to justify using AJAX in it’s purest form.

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AJAX, JSON, Javascript, AHAH