Online Chat Application

Online chat applications could be found in many browser-based applications. By adding this small application, users don’t just interact with the application but with other users as well.

Businesses also use this feature to effectively communicate with their clients to achieve real time response to costumer concerns. Although the power of VOIP has provided many business voice-based communications, chat is still considered a cost effective and easy to set up alternative. Chat could be enabled with various programming languages and will run in most major browsers.

In the world of Web 2.0, there are two programming techniques that could easily harness communication: Ajax and Comet. Although both programming techniques offer effective client side communication, they are different on how they implement real time communication with the browser.

The architecture of Ajax revolves around active and consistent data streaming from the client side to the server side processing. As soon as the user initiates a transaction on the browser, the data is immediately sent to the server for processing without waiting for additional commands. Each function could be interpreted at the same time so that functions will work together with the data entered.

On the other hand, Comet pushes the architecture of Ajax even further. Aside from data transmission to initiate the transaction with the server for processing, the data will be part of the event which will start the server for processing. Through the event bus, updates will be consistent on the client side since the data transmission will be consistent. Event bus is not just a simple coding but a very powerful function that pieces the data transmission with events so that it could provide improved communication with the client side.

So if these programming techniques are used for online chat, which one would work well?

Unfortunately, you can’t find a universal answer. Each provides an advantage that developers should consider. This means the proper use of Ajax or Comet to enable chat in online applications depends on the setting the developer wishes to have.

On the side of Ajax, developers would definitely enjoy familiarity as well as strong support from other developers. Although Comet is highly regarded as the “next Ajax” because of its powerful server-side push, full support from other developers is not yet there.

Everyone is well aware of the existence of Comet but the current architecture is not yet powerful enough to handle server-push demands. This is especially true if you’re developing an application for universal use. There will be users who will find it hard to work with Comet because of hardware constraints.

But there’s no doubt that Comet could work well in developing chat applications online. In fact, it will even work better than Ajax if the conditions are optimal. Unfortunately, the “optimal” setting for Comet requires powerful than normal hardware not only on the server-side for pushing events and data but also in users as well.

Comet may not yet push Ajax out of the picture as the powerful alternative for client side computing. But time will come wherein the current technology is powerful enough to handle this programming technique.