macromedia flash flash remoting: I am very interested in utilising Flash remoting, to redevelop my company?s
system.

I would like users to access and administer our databases using flash as a
front end, as I see enormous potential for it to be a complete all encompassing
office solution.

I have very little idea of the limitations flash remoting, could it be used to
administer a very large stock control system to the point where it could be
used to replace dedicated (but out of date) programs?

I would plan to use flash remoting on a private LAN network with about 50
users connected and would like to know if it would be quick enough to
constantly retrieve and update records from a multiple databases (one with over
one million records) like a relational database.

My idea would be to purchase a coldfusion server to only host databases on my
LAN and possibly use mySQL as the database it connects to. (Currently use this
set up for my companies online inventory search web site)

Has anyone used Flash remoting in such away.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

Russell Tudor

Hi Russell,

I have developed a number of enterprise level intranet systems connecting to a
number of database solutions (Ocacle, MSSQL even Filemaker, mySQL and Access)
and Remoting is certainly capable of doing the job. With features such as
recordset paging ColdFusion is certainly the best choice if you want to go the
Flash path.

On the down side there are probably performance benefits from other
technologies (Java, C# etc) that may be benefical to the organisation. You
really need to plan your requirements before deciding a technology to apply -
what is most important to the project, speed, scalability, inhouse expertise,
cost. All these issues will impact on your decision.

IMHO though Flash, ColdFusion and a decent RDBMS delivered over an Intranet is
a viable option and flankly a great project to sink your teeth into and can
often lead to so many other projects for the delivery and presentation of an
organisations information once everybody starts using the system and soon you
will inindated with requests for video, chats, forums etc.

Plan well and save heartache later.

Matt

Thank you for your views.

I have been looking at many options, but would love to use remoting to
interface with the databases.

After posting my thread, I noticed FLEX and was completely unaware of this
product until now. Both flex and remoting seem like they could do the same job,
but flex looks like it would be faster to produce user interfaces. The annoying
thing is that there is now another very similar product to remoting for me to
ponder.

I think I will try and replace our web site inventory search/order system with
remoting, then I don?t have to purchase my own copy of coldfusion and I will
get a better understanding of the limitations on a smaller scale.

Our current system is programmed in cobol which was developed in house, I was
considering using a program called relativity which creates an ODBC interface
to the cobol files and rig that up with coldfusion-flash. This way I can keep
the system as it is, and fall back to the tried and tested method (very trying)
without too much expense.

Regards,

Russell

OMG COBOL!!!

I haven't had to deal with that since the Y@K debarcle.

Flex is a great product but its cost is seen as a bit prohibitive for some.

If you are doing this on a budget there are JAVA, Perl and PHP flavours of
remoting available in the open-source community. I have used the AMFPHP system
on a couple of small projects and it worked fine but lacks some of the
benefits of the tight integration of ColdFusion & Flash and of course PHP is a
bit verbose.

Cost is not an issue to a point, when I tried to see how much flex costs I read
a post of the flex forum that it's about $12,000. This would be acceptable, but
I seem to remember seeing something last week which I can't locate on the flex
pages now that there is some sort of subscription charge as well?????

P.s. do you think we are the last company in the world still using Cobol!!!

I am curious how you came out on this Russelll. I have a similar challenge and
have been given similar advice. My data is test performance data that I want
to manipulate (lots of it). I don't know dick about Flash's capabilities other
than it is great for highly appealing interfaces. I am looking into it because
of that. Hoping to build a slick application for internal use.

So did you decide to go with Flex, Flash remoting, or what?

I don't want to spend the $12K on Flex, because I haven't been impressed with
the stuff I have seen. But, like I said, I don't know this stuff, very well.