Understanding Ajax and Web Services

Ajax is a collection of existing technologies and techniques for building browser-based applications. Ajax’s power centers on the JavaScript XMLHttpRequest object. This object can make data requests to a web server without redisplaying the entire web page. Couple this with JavaScript’s ability to dynamically modify the web page with DHTML and you have a powerful set of tools for improving the user experience.

Since Ajax retrieves data as XML it should pique the interest of web service users, since XML is lingua franca for almost all web services.