AJAX - A misconception?

My encounters with HR's of various companies have left me wondering on how people with very little/narrow technical knowledge end up being major recturing factors of some well known technical companies. Naming the person here and the company would actually soil the reputation of one of a few damn good companies, so i'll refrain from mentioning that and give more of the background and clear off a few misconceptions about a piece of technical jagron termed AJAX.

Here's the incident: It was kinda of deep into a tech interview round when i mentioned AJAX as one of the technologies i've been working on in the recent times. As expected the HR asked me what was AJAX and i gave the classical definition that even you can look up here. He then went on to ask how to make a score ticker using AJAX. I'll mention the steps here minus the technical jagron

1. Write javascript with an automated function call that calls itself every min or so as the time difference needed for the score update.

2. Create the xmlhttprequest object connection to the data source (an ASP/JSP page here)

3. Write the DataSource provider script to access the database and return the XML data.

4. Put the XML data on the page.

And to this he told: Wrong. Where are you using AJAX? You are using just javascript. I tried my best to convince him that AJAX technology is a confluence of javascript and XML. Ironical but his belief was that i had to drag and drop one of the widgets either from dojo/yui or any of the widget libraries that provide AJAX. Uph!! When will people ever learn that code libraries are also collection of javascripts that do the same job as we write; and the technology doesn't change whether you use an API/library or you yourself write the code within the technology constraints.

LESSON: Never go indepth onto the side of technology your interviewer has little knowledge off. The company doesn't deserve a bright individual as you.

AJAX

AJAX is simple.... It ought to be as you can even find books titled "Teach yourself AJAX in 10 minutes". I mean even the silliest of technology learning book titles have a minimum time span of 24 hours but by jove 10 minutes?? By the way the simplicity of ajax using jmaki plugin is demostrated in the following screencast(PS:don't feel bad, its a little screechy and 14 mins long but anyway gives an overview of jmaki and dojo). Now to the reality part, what exactly is AJAX? AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) isn'ta technology. It's really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. AJAX incorporates:

• Standards based presentation using XHTML and CSS


• Dynamic display and interaction using the document object model


• Data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT


• Asynchronous data retrieval using  XmlHttpRequest


• and JavaScript binding everything together.

What is important to note is that it is easy to use ajax code from ajax libraries available  such as those from Yahoo, Google and DOJO to name a few, but to write your own code in AJAX its humongus. The only way to be good at AJAX is "Practice, practice and more practice".