TechnologyDriven

This article from Sun gives a nice overview of the various possibilities a software developer has if he wants to incorporate AJAX-functionality into his application.

In short, the options are:

1. Do it yourself, when you need fine-grained control over your web application’s AJAX functionality.
2. Use a client-side JavaScript technology library (like Dojo or Prototype), when it can simplify the JavaScript technology code you would need to write for your web application.
3. Use a client-server framework (e.g. Ajax4jsf), when you want to take advantage of tools such as the Sun Java Studio Creator IDE to build web applications by dragging and dropping components, or if you’re already using JavaServer Faces technology to build web applications.
4. Do the “wrap thing”, i.e. wrap JavaScript widgets with JSP-tags or JSF-components (e.g. jMaki), when you already use JSP or JavaServer Faces technology in your web applications and need to access widgets from client-side JavaScript technology libraries.
5. Go remote (e.g. with Direct Web Remoting), when you have business logic in server-side Java objects that you want to use to process AJAX requests.
6. Go all Java technology (e.g. Google Web Toolkit), when you want to develop AJAX-enabled applications using the Java programming language exclusively.