What is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)?
by Bethany Hendricks on Glossary • January 26, 2021What is AJAX?
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a programmatic web application technique for asynchronous communication between client applications (e.g. a web browser) and web servers. It employs Javascript and the XMLHttpRequest object which defines an API for transferring data between a client and a server.
AJAX allows for updating parts of web pages without needing to reload the complete page and the inclusion of dynamic web content. Dynamic content can be loaded as a result of user input/request or as part of web application logic. It is possible to experience some degradation in web application performance if the use of AJAX request is abused on a web page as a result of network congestion or exhaustion of available web server connections.
The use of a web application accelerator can ameliorate the saturation of web server connections by applying some optimizations including minifying requested web resources for faster delivery to clients. The accelerator could also be configured to close idle client and/or server connections to free up resources for processing new client requests.