Tools for Ajax performance analysis

✎ Published: 2008-05-20 10:30:30

Web 2.0, leveraging Ajax for client-server communication, enhances usability by sending only changes, unlike the older Web 1.0 model. However, this can lead to challenges in debugging and performance issues, especially with concurrent HTTP connections. A resource-rich IBM developerWorks article outlines tools to identify and resolve these performance problems, beneficial for those engaged in low-level Ajax programming.

Tools for Ajax performance analysis

The Web 2.0, with it's simplified and enhanced usability paradigms, relies heavily on Ajax, as it's main tool for managing the communication between client and server. In comparison to the old Web 1.0 way of sending a HTTP Request and recieving the complete site, Ajax, of course, allows to communicate just the changes and moves the view part of the process from the server to the client via Javascript. However, this makes it sometimes difficult to debug and especially to find ressource and performance hogs. If you ever created a web app which suddenly didn't work at all anymore, because you have two concurrent never-ending HTTP connections going on via Ajax, you probably know what I'm talking about. 

The IBM developerWorks has an excellent article describing various tools which help in identifying those ressource hogs and performance problems, just as well as describing how to circumvent them. So if you're into lowlevel Ajax programming, this could be worthwhile information for you.