OpenAjax Alliance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The OpenAjax Alliance is an organization of leading vendors, open source projects, and companies using Ajax that are dedicated to the successful adoption of open and interoperable Ajax-based Web technologies. The organization was formed by leading Ajax companies and open source projects to address issues that require coordination across the many organizations that use and develop Ajax products and technologies. The organization's ultimate objective is customer success, where the target customer is the Web developer or IT professional who wants to use Ajax technologies to deliver Web applications with rich user interfaces.
OpenAjax Alliance's technical focus is interoperability across different Ajax products and technologies. Interoperability enables customers to integrate multiple Ajax technologies from different Ajax technology providers, thereby allowing them to assemble best-of-breed component technologies. This interoperability mission fits within the Alliance's philosophy, whereby the Alliance embraces diversity, innovation, and competition within an open marketplace, rather than relying on a single one-size-fits-all technology approach.
Additionally, as necessary and appropriate, OpenAjax Alliance will play a leadership role within the Ajax ecosystem.
Contents |
[edit] History
In late 2005, with leadership from IBM, a small number of leading companies brainstormed about how to ensure that Ajax fulfills its potential as the industry standard rich application platform based on open technologies. These early discussions came to a climax on Feb. 1, 2006, with the announcement of the "OpenAjax Initiative", whose 15 original companies included BEA, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Google, IBM, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell, Openwave Systems, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo, Zend and Zimbra. [1]
Between February 1 and May 15, 2006, an additional 15 organizations joined "OpenAjax", and the (then) 30 companies held a two-day kickoff meeting in San Francisco to lay out the blue-print for the initiative moving forward. At the meeting, the group decided to establish the OpenAjax Alliance, defined its mission, agreed on an interim organizational process, and established its initial activities [2].
Subsequently, the participating companies defined a formal governance model via a Members Agreement, and then began execution on its various marketing/educational and technical activities. The initial Web site and white paper went live in September 2006 [3]. The alliance elected its first Steering Committee in October 2006 [4]. The first technical product from the alliance was the OpenAjax Hub, with a complete draft specification and reference open source implementation completed by December 2006 and integrated a dozen Ajax toolkits on a trial basis as part of the alliance's first OpenAjax InteropFest [5].
As of March 2007, the organization had more than 70 member organizations, including recent announcements of Microsoft and Google becoming members.
[edit] Members
The list of members of OpenAjax Alliance has been growing steadily. For the most current list of members, refer to the OpenAjax Alliance home page [6] or the members wiki page [7].
The membership list is varied. Among the various members are organizations that fall into one or more of the following categories:
- Ajax toolkit developers (open source and commercial)
- Web browsers (desktop and mobile)
- Enterprise products companies
- Organizations that use Ajax to deliver solutions to their users
- Other community-oriented organziations, such as open source projects or standards organizations, that have a strong interest in Ajax
[edit] How OpenAjax Alliance is organized
[edit] Steering Committee
The members of the OpenAjax Alliance elect representatives from seven companies to positions on the OpenAjax Alliance Steering Committee. The Steering Committee manages the affairs of the OpenAjax Alliance on behalf of its member organizations. Among other things, the Steering Committee has final approval on the creation of working groups and specifications.
[edit] Working Groups
The formal materials produced by OpenAjax Alliance will be developed within Working Groups. The following two working groups are in the process of being formally chartered in accordance with various process documents that the members have adopted.
- Interoperability Working Group - This group is responsible for technical activities in the general area of Ajax interoperability, with an initial focus on client-side runtime issues. The key products coming out of this group will include the specifications that provide the detailed definition of OpenAjax Conformance, such as the specification for the OpenAjax Hub, management of the OpenAjax Registry, and development of OpenAjax Best Practices.
- Marketing Working Group - This group is responsible for the OpenAjax Alliance's communications, educational and promotional activities for fulfilling the alliance's mission to accelerate customer success with Ajax, promote adoption of open and interoperable Ajax-based Web technologies, and help drive the future of the Ajax ecosystem. Among other things, this group produces the alliance's white papers, oversees the development of its website, and drives the strategy, high-level definition and industry rollout of the term OpenAjax Conformance.
[edit] Task Forces
The OpenAjax Alliance establishes task forces to investigate possible areas of new activity. The task forces are informal groups of interested members who perform relevant research and then produce recommendations for future alliance activities. At this time, there are four active task forces:
- IDE Integration Task Force, which is investigating common approaches for integrating Ajax components into IDEs
- Communications Hub Task Force, which is investigating the possibility of a client-side OpenAjax module, perhaps a new feature within the OpenAjax Hub, to mediate client-server communications, particularly in the area of server-push scenarios. The task force is also investigating corresponding server-side communications hub technologies and server-independent messaging protocols, with these latter two topics done in coordination with other organizations.
- Security Task Force, which is identifying key Ajax security issues and investigating what related activities should be pursued by the alliance
- Mobile Ajax Task Force, which is investigating what OpenAjax Alliance can do to accelerate adoption and developer success in delivering Ajax applications to mobile devices
[edit] Specifications and open source
Although the OpenAjax Alliance does not intend to become a broadly focused, formal standards body, the alliance does engage in standards-related activities when such activities appear necessary in order to achieve objectives for greater interoperability, vendor choice and promoting innovation. As a result, the OpenAjax Alliance will sometimes develop its own formal specifications and/or open source to fill critical industry gaps. In these cases, the expected outcome in the long term is to turn over such work at an appropriate point to a formal standards organization or open-source project. Often, specifications and corresponding implementation work will occur in parallel.
A focus of the OpenAjax Alliance is collaboration with other key standards efforts. Members of the OpenAjax Alliance may participate in standards activities within other standards bodies and open source projects to help accelerate the coordinated advancement of OpenAjax technologies and products.
[edit] OpenAjax Conformance
A cornerstone of OpenAjax Alliance activities is the definition of OpenAjax Conformance. OpenAjax Conformance is shorthand for the set of conformance requirements that the OpenAjax Alliance places on Ajax technologies, products and applications to promote interoperability and customer success. By using Ajax products that support OpenAjax Conformance, IT managers and Web developers realize the following benefits:
- Seemless integration of multiple Ajax products and technologies within the same Web application, particularly with applications that use mashup techniques
- Greater certainty about product choices, where OpenAjax Conformance plays a similar role in the Ajax community as the Good Housekeeping Seal does with consumer products
- Lower training costs, lower development costs, and faster delivery of Web 2.0 innovations due to industry adoption of common approaches that build from OpenAjax standards
- Interchangeability of OpenAjax Conformant products, such that customers can choose among multiple vendors
As currently envisioned, to be OpenAjax Conformant, an Ajax product must:
- Support the OpenAjax Hub
- Register its library and JavaScript global objects with the OpenAjax Registry
- Support all relevant Conformance Requirements defined within the OpenAjax Alliance's collection of OpenAjax Best Practices specifications
[edit] OpenAjax Hub
The OpenAjax Hub is a small set of JavaScript technologies that addresses critical Ajax runtime interoperability requirements. Version 1.0 of the OpenAjax Hub has the following features:
- Ajax library loading
- Load/unload event notification
- A publish/subscribe-based event hub (topic bus)
The Alliance develops the OpenAjax Hub Specification and provides an open-source reference implementation.
[edit] OpenAjax Registry
The vision for the OpenAjax Registry is that it will provide a centralized, industry-wide global object registration authority that helps prevent JavaScript object collision within complex Ajax applications. The OpenAjax Registry is still under development.
[edit] OpenAjax Best Practices
In addition to committee work on technical specifications that promote interoperability, the OpenAjax Alliance intends to develop a set of OpenAjax Best Practices, which consist of requirements and recommendations that lead to optimal customer results, such as better interoperability, portability, accessibility and internationalization.
[edit] Marketing and communication
The OpenAjax Alliance engages in various promotional, educational and communication activities. Its Web site provides a standard vocabulary for industry terms such as "Ajax" and "OpenAjax" and includes whitepapers and block diagrams on Ajax technologies and associated best practices, with a focus on cross-vendor interoperability. Representatives speak about OpenAjax at conferences and other industry events.
The OpenAjax Alliance Web site provides a central point of information about the OpenAjax vision, explaining how to adopt Ajax successfully so that IT developers will feel safe about their technology and vendor choices.
