Support aspects of AJAX

AJAX has grown up! People starting to wonder what impact AJAX style applications have as compared to the older logic. Some impacts are obviously positive, some not so.

From the support point of view, AJAX style application may cause more hidden problems due to the granularity of the communications. Specifically, where a single user previously might have made one new server request every 30 seconds after initial load, with AJAX, the same user might be generating a new request every couple of seconds.

This means that even a server for small userbase will have to be configured and tuned as if the userbase is much higher. I am talking higher workers counts, more potential for bottlenecks, higher log volume.

And if the userbase was already high or is growing rapidly, the servers may not even be able to deal with it well and may even require a different implementation style.

Greg Wilkins - who is the author of Jetty HTTP server - has started thinking of it already. His article about these issues is well worth a read even if you are using a different server.

BlogicBlogger Over and Out