Ajax is perhaps the best known RIA technology today. While several implementations of Ajax have arrived, and many software projects involve the use of Ajax; there is still a lack of consistency in the approach and usage of Ajax. There is also a significant confusion regarding which Ajax toolkit should be used, and how?

This discussion looks at the changes Java has undergone and is likely to undergo in the near future. Do these changes make Java ready for the future? Will Java continue to be a dominant force or will the emergence of scripting languages shift the balance?

Does Java have what it takes for developing Web 2+ applications? Will changing business needs force traditional Java software development to make way for a newer breed of rapid development languages, tools, frameworks and techniques?

Digital signature mimics a pen-paper signature. When we sign on a piece of paper using a pen, we vouch for something. We stand guarantee for something. For example, when we sign a cheque, we commit that we would honor the payment. Barring the case of cheque bouncing, this commitment works. Digital signatures attempt to do the same thing in electronic transactions. Great confusions about the term digital signature exist, and hence a quick clarification about the technology would help.

Ajax allows us to build Web 2.0 applications with ease. However, it also raises a number of questions. One such very pertinent question is regarding user authentication. User authentication simply means checking the authenticity of the user, How should we ensure that authentication mechanisms are not bypassed, when we use Ajax – in other words, when we deal with asynchronous way of communication, instead of a standard user ID-password based mechanism?

Since its inception, the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) technology has been a bit of an enigma. While almost all other Java/J2EE (now Java EE) technologies seem to be quite important, somehow knowing how to work with EJB has always been something to be proud about. If someone claims that she has experience in J2EE technologies only to discover that it excludes EJB, the experience in J2EE is more often than not considered as irrelevant.

Atul Kahate looks at Unicode charater encoding, the facts the myths, the need and the use. He talks of traditional encoding schemes like ASCII and later provides a comparison of the Unicode formats UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32. The article lists the pros and cons of the various character encoding schemes and their common uses.