Untitled Document
MMBUG Slideshow
Demo - Flash Remoting
with Java & .NET
Why Flash Remoting
Matters
Macromedia's MX product
line makes it possible to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) using Flash.
We won't attempt to go into detail about why RIAs are important here - Macromedia
has a fair amount of information
on the subject. Suffice to say that Flash is maturing into a true application
development platform, with substantially better ease-of-use than standard web
pages, and a larger installed base than Windows, Java, or any other platform
(Flash has 98% penetration).
Flash Remoting is a
key MX feature because it makes it easy for Flash applications to access and
interact with server-side data. Using Flash Remoting, your application can do
all of the following:
- Easily access
web services. If you aren't already familiar with web services, and define
yourself as a geek, you need to learn about them. They're becoming the standard
technology for sharing information between applications over the internet.
This article
at Web Services Architect
provides a good general overview.
- Easily access server-side databases.
As this article is targeted at geeks, we'll assume that you already understand
the myriad of ways in which this can make your applications more useful.
- Pass complex objects from server
to client, and vice versa. Yes, you too can take a complex Java or .NET object
and pass it into Flash with all its properties intact. (Methods are another
matter, but let's ignore that for now.)
In short, Flash Remoting will make
it much easier for you to create powerful, useful applications.
Goals Of The Demo
Our primary goal in
creating this demo is to help you start creating Flash Remoting applications.
Macromedia offers lots of resources that will help you to do this with ColdFusion
on the server, so we're focusing on Java and .NET. We also
provide ColdFusion code so that you can compare it.
We provide a sample
application that will run with all three server-side platforms. The application
demonstrates accessing a server-side database and accessing
a web service. In both cases we keep the functionality quite simple
and leave it to you to imagine more complex applications. You should be able
to get it up and running on your platform of choice, then play with it and extend
it.
After
that it's up to you. As you make exciting discoveries please consider submitting
them to this blog at FRJNblog@mmbug.org.
More
info...
11:03:57 PM 
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