Question

I’ve a situation wherein I’ve to choose between two options.

1. I’ve to make three different ajax requests to three jsps each of which returns say 30kB of data.
2. I’ve to make one ajax request to just one jsp which say has 300kB of data. But I would be using only 90kB of it.

Which of these options should I prefer ?
This question just boils down to ‘how much of overhead is involved in an ajax call?’ .

Also, please note that I’ve to perform the above steps repeatedly.

Thanks

Answer 1

You could run your tests with Fiddler2 to check the size of each package and overhead.
You’ll see that:

1. The total size with headers will certainly be smaller with option (1)
2. The total time for all requests will probably be smaller with option (2)

Expect overheads smaller than 1 kB for each request.
Only cookies can increase that amount above that threshold.