flash data integration: Dear Friends,

First let me thank those who are ever so generous with their time to answer my
questions. Your expertise and knowledge is greatly appreciated by the entire
community.

I have some pre-design questions as to how best to handle integrating MySQL
data with Flash MX04 Pro. I'm currently in the early design stages and want to
ensure I pursue the "correct" development path. I know there are many ways to
attack a problem, but I am looking for the most efficient and effective method.

I?m building a project with approximately 1,100 data points which will be
plotted to a line/bar chart. I?ve calculated the average XML file would be
approximately 180k. At no point will the Flash component try to update the
MySQL data base. This is a read only application.

The XML structure will look like this:

<chart id="high">
<data_point_0>123<data_point_0>
<data_point_1>4567<data_point_1>
<data_point_2>890<data_point_2>
?
<data_point_1000>1234<data_point_1000>
</chart>

Does Flash MX04 have a built-in parser so the XML could be reduced like this:

<chart id="high">
<data_points>123,4567,890,?..,1234</data_points>
</chart>


Would it be better to use XML and the "Web Service Connector Component" or
"Web Service Classes"?

Or would it be best to skip XML altogether and use AMF (Action Message Format)
and the "Remoting Connector Component" considering the number of data points?

If the best solution is AMF, which Linux solution is best, PHP or Perl?

Finally, I fear I may have to write a real-time line and bar chart ing module
from the ground up as I haven?t found any packages that can plot data points to
a chart in real time. If anyone knows of a good one, please let me know. I
found two packages to date but they seem to only work with static data.
Unfortunately, neither company returned my email query as to clarify if they
could update dynamically during run-time.

Sincerely,

SRE

Hi SRE: First, there's no reason you can't do this via XML very effeciently.
Second, I would reconsider your XML format. Your data really isn't a series of
unique strings or objects. It's really an array, and if you think about a
database, to normalize the data you wouldn't use one row with a bunch of
columns, rather a single column and a bunch rows. <chart id='high'>
<data_point>123456</datapoint> <data_point>555566</datapoint> ... </chart>
You can then import the XML data via the XML connector. Your data will be a
single array. This is a very simple charting project and think you'll find at
least one or more charting components in the Flash Exchange, if you search for
'chart' without the quotes, that can accept an array of data or even bind to
the XML directly. Good luck with it. James

James,

Thank you very kindly for your response. I especially loved the added bonus
of learning that flash can handle arrays. You betcha I'll export the XML as an
array now. Your help is greatly appreciated and knowing beforehand the correct
course of action will save me much time and frustration. I'll take another
look around for charting plug-ins.