Rather than using a "save" button on a web form, many web designers like a "save as you go" approach. Where as the user's changes to the data are saved immediately once the user changes focus out of say a text box.
Has anyone identified a formal pattern for this technique? I especially need to tie it all back to chunky service call. Concurrency issues seem to be one of the first issues coming to mind.
Ajax Patters has the Object Persistence pattern which sounds like what you're describing.
You may also want to look at the Fat Client article regarding response issues which might arrise.
This "pattern" is actually the norm for real world interfaces (the radio doesn't wait for you to hit save before applying your volume changes).
As for the concurrency, one solution is to say that server time is "real" and then use ajax to push changes to clients who may be looking at semantically intersecting views.
-- MarkusQ