Version 6.3.3
 —  Natural for Ajax  —

Introduction

Using Natural for Ajax, you can create rich internet applications which use the Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technology. This enables Natural users on Windows, UNIX and mainframe platforms to develop and use Natural applications with a browser-based user interface, similar to GUI desktop applications.

This document covers the following topics:


What is a Rich Internet Application?

Classical HTML- and browser-based applications suffer from known disadvantages. The server responds to each user interaction with a new page. This may lead to long response times and new rendering in the browser and thus to a discontinuous workflow for the user. The possibilities offered by DHTML overcome these disadvantages, but they are complicated to use and make it hard to build a comfortable user interface. The user interface is therefore often simpler and less comfortable than users are accustomed to from their experience with desktop applications. Although it is possible to provide complex controls and features like drag-and-drop, this is hard to implement - especially if compatibility with all commonly used browsers is required. Classical GUI applications also have the disadvantage that a client component of the application must be installed on each client machine.

Rich internet applications that use the Ajax technology overcome these disadvantages by combining the reachability of browser-based applications with the rich user interface of GUI applications. Software AG provides support for the development of rich internet applications with Application Designer. Natural for Ajax combines the user interface capabilities of Application Designer with the application development capabilities of Natural.

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Rich Internet Applications with Natural

At runtime, a rich internet application with Natural has the following structure:

At development time, a rich internet application is created with Natural in the following way:

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Mixed Applications

With the support of Unicode, Natural has introduced the Web I/O Interface which renders Natural maps in a web browser. Typically, if you are running map-oriented applications and wish to change them to rich internet applications, you will do this gradually. In certain parts of an application, maps might be replaced by rich GUI pages, other parts will possibly be left unchanged. Therefore, Natural supports running mixed applications which consist of both maps and rich GUI pages. With maps, the application controls the page layout, and the rendering mechanism therefore respects the layout information that the application provides. With rich GUI pages, the application does not control the layout; the layout is controlled by Application Designer. However, for the users of an application the switch between maps and rich GUI pages is seamless.

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