Refactoring legacy AJAX applications to improve the efficiency of the data exchange component

  • Authors:
  • Ming Ying;James Miller

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Systems and Software
  • Year:
  • 2013

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

The AJAX paradigm encodes data exchange XML formats. Recently, JSON has also become a popular data exchange format. XML has numerous benefits including human-readable structures and self-describing data. However, JSON provides significant performance gains over XML due to its light weight nature and native support for JavaScript. This is especially important for Rich Internet Applications (RIA). Therefore, it is necessary to change the data format from XML to JSON for efficiency purposes. This paper presents a refactoring system (XtoJ) to safely assist programmers migrate existing AJAX-based applications utilizing XML into functionally equivalent AJAX-based applications utilizing JSON. We empirically demonstrate that our transformation system significantly improves the efficiency of AJAX applications.