Oracle has contributed a set of tools to the open source community designed to let developers build Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) user interfaces.

Ajax allows developers to create online applications that pre-fetch data allowing for increased interactivity and usability, while cutting back on the number of pages that a user has to visit.

The Oracle tool allows developers to create interfaces in an automated way instead of coding them by hand.

"We are giving it back to the community so you guys can build great looking applications," Thomas Kurian, Oracle's senior vice president for server technologies development, said during a keynote at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. 

The company argued that open source tools and standards are a critical resource to simplify the development of the next wave of interactive online offerings often referred to as Web 2.0 applications.

"Java, open source and scripting languages are key elements for the development of the next wave of web applications," said Ted Farrell, Oracle's chief architect and vice president for tools and middleware.