In this presentation, filmed at the recent Ajax Experience conference, Ted Goddard, Senior Architect at IceSoft, takes a complete trip through the Ajax Push pipeline, and describes the lessons learned from developing the ICEfaces framework. Using a multi-user slideshow system as an example, he demonstrates how non-blocking I/O rescues Java Servlets from a thread catastrophe brought on by blocking HTTP connections. Watch Ajax Push and Collaborative Enterprise Applications

I wonder if Javafaces is the new EJB, where a bunch of companies will try to sell products with it but hardly anyone will bite?

I wonder if Javafaces is the new EJB, where a bunch of companies will try to sell products with it but hardly anyone will bite?

Everyone's mileage will vary, but I tend to agree with you. Everytime I talk with someone from Sun, I do my best to try to get them to see at least what I am seeing in the trenches of big corporate enterprise development, meaning finally the same type of "use this stack b/c we say to use this stack" is starting to give way in favor of more agility. This is not just in the frameworks/patterns/useage but also in the processes that are used for development, team organizations, everything. I wish the stewards of the JSRs and platform specs would take a more aggressive approach to KISS and actual useage instead of figuring out a way to support Ajax in JSF for example. The latest Terracotta DSO news is a great example of something that could/should just be there in the platform. The last time I vented I mentioned that Sun should start by acquiring Terracotta and Jide Software and just give it away by making it part of what's there by default (Jide makes your swing app actually look professional). I'd personally rather see this kind of approach instead of letting things languish in "open source incubation", specifically things like Swing labs (remember the original promise of JDNC, etc? it's taken YEARS for these things to bake). If Sun were a company that had to survive on software alone perhaps we'd be better off as a community, but as things are changing (for the better I think), more community useage can drive and determine what's there by default. If I see another developer where I work pickup a J2EE blueprint/patterns book I might vomit on it to prevent its utility ;-)

Ajax PUSH? Doesn't Ajax pull? If the Ajax is not on the server, it cannot push to the browzzer. Or am I missing something here?

It IS push ... sorta you use XmlHttpConnection as sort of server event queue. When request is received if queue is empty, request thread blocks, when server wishes to update state it finnishes response. Browser receives response and updates UI accordingly and immediately issues a new request where it waits for next update. Search for Comet for a more detailed explaination.

Wonder if Ajax push framework must be tightly coupled to view rendering technology? Is there anything out there for Ajax push without JSF?

Wonder if Ajax push framework must be tightly coupled to view rendering technology? Is there anything out there for Ajax push without JSF?

Both DWR and Comet include push capabilities, in the sense that HTTP is used to send messages from the server to the client, but the particular strength of ICEfaces is the programming model surrounding Ajax Push -- application-initiated update is no more difficult than calling render() from your bean; ICEfaces fills in all the details.