How effective is the Google Web Toolkit for building AJAX applications?
I’ve started working with the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and would recommend it to those familiar with Java. Tools provided by the GWT for building Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (AJAX) Web applications from Java source code are compelling for those comfortable with Java, HTML and JavaScript.
It’s liberating to debug applications under development in the GWT-hosted browser and then deploy compiled AJAX applications to the Web without having to write browser-specific presentation script by hand to work around different browsers. The supplied collection of user interface widgets and layout panels is impressive compared with the lowest common denominator for browser capabilities.
The downside is that without a level of comfort in building Java applications with ANT (www.apache.org) or Eclipse (www.eclipse.org), the GWT will be difficult to use at first. The remote procedure call (RPC) capabilities of the GWT might make learning a little Java worth the effort to deliver dynamic AJAX applications that work across several browsers.
The server side of GWT uses an extension of the standard HTTPServlet class that automatically deserializes incoming requests and serializes outgoing responses for RPCs. Application services constructed with GWT can be deployed to any standard servlet container. GWT is an attractive standards-compliant delivery mechanism for robust AJAX application functionality.
