Issues in Ajaxifying nonajax based web applications

[Isuru Samaraweera]

Hi All,
I have few doubts to clear on ajaxifying existing traditional web based applications.


I assume that maintaining the security is not going to be a difficult task.You just need to protect the urls at the web.xml applying declarative security.

Or Is my assumption wrong?Do I need to put significant effort to preserve security when you convert non-ajax apps to ajax based apps?


Page navigability for users has to be reevaluated because you need to re-organize your pages to invoke ajax end point urls and render corresponding section of the page.Am I wrong?

Also ajaxification involves more development to achieve accessibility across clients.You may have to write browser specific codes to make it work in firefox,ie,etc..Am I wrong?


You don't need to redesign the system to achieve scalability.This is correct statement.Any objections?

Also to maintain the current performance after ajaxifying does not need additional hardware .This is correct statement.Any objections?


Please clarify above critics.

Thanks,
Isuru

[Ulf Dittmer]

I assume that maintaining the security is not going to be a difficult task.You just need to protect the urls at the web.xml applying declarative security.

There is a whole lot more to web app security than authentication: https://coderanch.com/how-to/java/SecurityFaq#web-apps

Also ajaxification involves more development to achieve accessibility across clients.You may have to write browser specific codes to make it work in firefox,ie,etc..Am I wrong?

Yes. JavaScript libraries like jQuery abstract away browser-specific differences.

[Isuru Samaraweera]

Hi Ulf,
According to these urls "maintaining security in ajax applications is a tedious task" which bothers developers who is conducting the transition.

How about my claim on page navigability above?

Please clarify

Thanks,
Isuru

[Ulf Dittmer]

According to these urls "maintaining security in ajax applications is a tedious task" which bothers developers who is conducting the transition.

"Tedious"? That seems a curious attitude. It is a crucial task for all web apps, and the frequent use of XMLHttpRequest (which underlies AJAX) increases the HTTP surface of a web app, adding some new attack vectors. You may wish to work through a book like Ajax Security to learn more about that.

[Isuru Samaraweera]

Hi Ulf,
Thanks for the reply.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Tedious?s=t

Above link takes you to the definition of tedious.

So I can affirm that ajaxifying involves a lot of attention on implementing security.Infact it should be the foremost nonfunctional aspect to be implemented when you ajaxify a web application.


Thanks,
Isuru

[Christian Nicoll]

Sorry for excavating this old post, but I don't understand it.

In the context of Ajaxifying an nonajax based web application were the following for consequences off the following aspects asked:
- Security
- Page navigability
- Browser compatibility
- Scalability

I only understand that security is a big topic while such a migration. For the browser compatibility there was the hint made to JQuery, and yes I agree that with using such a framework it should not be a problem. But when I would see such as question in the exam, without any hints to additional JavaScript frameworks, how can I say that browser compatibility is not a big issue?

The other two points page navigability and Scalability weren't answered, or at least I didn't have seen them. My understanding of page navigability is that this area describes how my web pages are linked together and how I can navigate from one page to another. Due to the possibility with Ajax to load smaller parts of information to a page, I would say that it make also sense to reevalute this point.

From a scalability point of view it is clear for me that much more (smaller) requests will be send to the server than earlier the fewer (bigger) requests. Depending on the browser based events that trigger an Ajax-request I would also see the scalability as an important point.

It would be great if someone could share his thoughts.

Regards,
Christian

[Christian Nicoll]

No thoughts about those points? Is it perhaps not that clear at all?

[Matt Keller]

It depends on how your using ajax.  If you are going to change your whole application to a restful service/json ajax model, then I'd say you are starting from scratch.  If you want to start bringing in partial pages instead of full pages then its more like you are just breaking up your current application into smaller pieces.