Help with ajax and form submission

While working on a new application, a friend and I ran into a problem
with using ajax. Users are used to being able to modify the contents of
a screen until they are finished and then saving (committing). There
does not seem to be a way to do this with ajax, since you have to modify
the model whenever you call back to the server. The half baked solution
that we came up with is to create a copy of the
child collections and the parent in the session, and modify them. Once
the user submits, everything is then taken from the session and
committed. Is there a better way to allow for this kind of functionality
and use ajax?

Phil Craven wrote:

While working on a new application, a friend and I ran into a problem
with using ajax. Users are used to being able to modify the contents of
a screen until they are finished and then saving (committing). There
does not seem to be a way to do this with ajax, since you have to modify
the model whenever you call back to the server.
So why use AJAX? If there’s no benefit in the round trip, why bother
breaking the metaphor?

The flip side of that argument is quite well thought through here:
Trend reports, Media strategy, Monetization models, Analytics ... and more - Baekdal

In the end, it all devolves down to how you present the UI, not the
technology behind it.