Hello All...

Ok, so I've heard enough about AJAX. So what is it? Is it a tehnology? A technique? Do I need to download something for it? A co-worker is hooked on AJAX. Me? I'm an old c++ programmer sold on ASP.NET - and so the debate goes on... Do ASP.NET and AJAX compete? Or do they work together? Sometimes it seems asp.net does what ajax does without all the code... I went as far as picking up a book, Ajax Patterns and Best Practices, by Christian Gross. So far a good book. There's even a pattern for a problem I've been trying to solve for some time - pushing unsolicited data to the client. So interesting...

Ok, so what's the point of this post? I implore you. In a reasonably sized single paragraph - what IS AJAX?

Curt