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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 1–2Cite as

AJAX

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Definition

AJAX is an acronym for “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML” and refers to a collection of web development technologies used together to create highly dynamic web applications.

Key Points

AJAX does not refer to a specific technology, but instead refers to a collection of technologies used in conjunction to develop dynamic and interactive web applications. The two main technologies comprising AJAX are the JavaScript scripting language and the W3C open standard XMLHttpRequest object API. While the use of XML and DOM are important for standardized data representation, using neither XML nor DOM is required for an application to be considered AJAX-enabled since the XMLHttpRequest API actually supports any text format.

Using the XMLHttpRequest API, web applications can fetch data asynchronously while registering a callback function to be invoked once the fetched data is available. More concretely, the XMLHttpRequest object issues a standard HTTP POST or GET request to a web server but...

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Recommended Reading

  1. The document object model: W3C working draft. Available at: http://www.w3.org/DOM/

  2. The XMLHttpRequest object: W3C working draft. Available at: http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Alex Wun

Authors
  1. Alex Wun
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alex Wun .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Dept. of Elec. and Comp.Eng., Univ. of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, M5S 3G4, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    H. - Arno Jacobsen

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

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Cite this entry

Wun, A. (2016). AJAX. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_1190-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_1190-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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