While the buzz-word "AJAX" does mean Asychronous JavaScript and XML, it should be noted that the communications with the
servlet need not be Asychronous; it can very well be Synchronous if that is what your specific application requires. Nor does the format of the data transferred to the browser need to be XML. It can just as easily be JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), plain text or some other format of your choice (if you like writing parsers, that is). About the only part of the acronym that is needed is the JavaScript (but I wouldn't bet against it even being possible at some point to do the same thing with VBScript, if one were so inclined).
