macromedia flash flash remoting: Hi,

I am relatively new to flash and flash remoting and I have a couple of general
questions. I hear all about Web Services and alot of books talk about using
Flash with web services. Which is better to use in an app that connects to a
dbase (i.e. Access, SQL) remoting or a web service. Which is easier to do as
well and what is the difference between the two. It is not real clear to me.
Also, I noticed that Flex is a new product and it looks (on the outside) alot
like Flash. I am trying to understand why one would be chosen over the other as
I was thinking of doing a dashboard for my work using Flash and remoting (or
web services) and their examples on the Macromedia website show flex doing this
type of stuff. Any thoughts or comments that would help me understand the above
questions would be greatly appreciated. Lastly, is Flash remoting here to stay
or is it going to be going away and Flex be the software to be "pushed"?

Thanks again for your input to my questions.

-mike

Hi Mike,

Flex is a completely new way to develop Rich Internet Applications - it
has been designed for enterprise developers rather who might not necessarily
know anything about Flash design. Flex uses an XML based language (MXML)
with ActionScript 2.0 to create applications. Flex has many pre-built
components to help you quickly build UIs, connect to WebServices and
RemoteObjects (i.e. which includes traditional Flash Remoting services). All
of this can be developed in a text editor of choice or the new Flex Builder
(a Dreamweaver like editor for building Flex applications).

Note that the Flex presentation server pricing starts at $12,000 for two
CPUs and includes annual maintenance and Flex Builder.

Flash Authoring and remoting aren't going away by any means- there are
thousands of Flash designers out there who are comfortable with the Flash MX
Authoring tool and are building applications already. Have a read of Nigel's
documentation on Flex from a Flash perspective:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articles/flash_perspective.html

What application server environment are you used to? What languages do
you develop in already?

Rgds,
Pete



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Pete,

Thanks for the reply...I was wondering if any one was ever going to comment.
The application environment that I am most used to is Cold Fusion MX and most
of the stuff that I have done has been intranet for our company. What I would
like to do is to use Flash Remoting for alot of the reports that I generate,
but the documentation isn't all that helpful. What is being done in Flex in
terms of the examples (i.e. executive dashboard) is what I would like to
migrate my stuff to in Flash. Right now the sight is simple and intuitive, but
there is alot of page refreshes for graphs and when different parameters are
chosen. I would like to primarily use the data grid component, several combo
boxes and the chart components. The combo boxes are pretty self explanatory and
the data grid I am muddling through. I have not found alot of help on the
charting components and charting multiple series. If there is anything you can
recommend in terms of getting up to speed on Flash MX Pro (Remoting) and the
charting components?

Anyway..I appreciate your time and comments and any suggestions would be
greatly appreciated.

-mike

Which particular version of Flash charting components are you talking about?
I believe Flash MX had a few simple charting components in the Version 1.0
suite of components, but for more complicated charting I know people
preferred to use third-party charting components such as the ones from
http://www.blinex.com/

Since you're already using CFMX, you should be able to use CF Query objects
as data providers to Flash Components in most cases.

Tom Muck released an O'Reilly book on Flash Remoting - the companion website
to this book contains all of the examples used in this book - some of them
include CFMX database communications. If the charting components take a data
provider, then it shouldn't be too hard to adapt data grid examples to
charts.

Pete,

It is the charting components version 2 (via DevNet) and Flash M Pro 2004.
Could you show a quick eample of using the query objects as a data provider?
Thanks. I will take a look at the Tom Muck book. Would you recommend purchasing
it? Thanks again for your comments.

-mike

Tom has lots of examples listed here:

http://www.flash-remoting.com/examples/master.cfm


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