The name came from the play Ajax by Sophocles, where one of his titles is 'whip bearer' - he flayed his opponents.

The 7 surviving plays of Sophocles are: "Antigone," "Oedipus Rex" (also known as "Oedipus the King"), "Oedipus at Colonus," "Ajax," "Electra," "The Women of Trachis" (also known as "The Trachiniae"), and "Philoctetes."

There were two Ajax. Ajax Oileades and Ajax the greater.

you mean JavaApplet or Ajax?

I do not think you can compare java as a whole and AJAX. Ajax is a simple implementation of JAvascript .

Unfortunately I am not specialst in AjaX, but I can advice you these online tutorials:php tutorials. There are many articles about php, AjaX and interaction between AjaX and PHP in whole.