RE: [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems - which provides best functionality

[Franck de Bruijn]

Hi Barry,   I’m not sure if I can be of much help here. I’m not into PHP, I’m not into FDS and remoting and the AMF protocol that is related to it. For me, but that is totally a personal opinion, the only acceptable solution for communication with a back-end is webservices, and nothing else. Briefly here are my reasons: The coolest thing about Flex is not the graphics ... but that you can make your server stateless, meaning that you obtain 100% fail-over characteristics including linear scalability. With FDS (or any other related solution) you highly likely lose this ‘feature’ and my guess is that scalability will be tougher to achieve; for sure it is harder to guarantee ... with a stateless server solution you can. And we always want to grow with our applications, don’t we??? I like to keep my Flex layer totally independent of my back-end layer. My back-end layer should not be aware by any means of the client technology. With webservices you realize this. With FDS (or any other related solution) you get a vendor lock-in, which I consider undesirable. The trend in my business is that more and more you get projects only for a front-end or back-end solution. In the past it occurred more that you had to build them together, but that is changing. It’s very acceptable to request a back-end to expose its operations through webservices. It’s not very accetable to request them to expose it via FDS or something like that.   To be fair, there are some disadvantages using web services as well; among others: No automatic conversion of the web service results into your custom action script classes. You have to make converters yourself to accomplish this. With FDS/AMF I understand you can have this conversion automatically done for you. Performance. People tend to say that webservices are slow. It’s true that the serialization/deserialization of the XML (both on client and server) side takes computing time. My experiences so far are that this extra computing time is not causing any serious damage in the user experience. Flex has some trouble communicating with DOC/Literal encoded webservices. Especially in the .Net corner this is causing problems. But that should be temporarily ... The adobe guys are working on it and hopefully in a next release these issues will be fixed.   For me the advantages of webservices by far outweigh the disadvantages. So if you ask me: use webservices! You keep your freedom ...   Cheers, Franck     From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:flexcoders@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of barry.beattie Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 9:50 AM To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems - which provides best functionality   Franck and Doug: may I be so bold as to include here some information I sent to our programming team for them to have some context? I offer it here as a talking point only - and would invite any comments or corrections to help me gain a better understanding myself ... this has just been gathered by my own ad-hoc investigations. the context of the email was a report that Adobe were seriously targeting PHP developers for Flex. ------------------------------------ regarding Flash remoting: some background to put it into context: there are three basic ways of getting communication happening between a SWF (now-a-days built with Flex) and server-side code: webservices XML HTTP requests Flash Remoting (using the Async Message Format - AMF) PHPAMF (Flash remoting with PHP) is not a Macromedia/Adobe product. It was reverse engineered by the PHP community to use Flash remoting. It's been around for a few years (that I know of) and may be even more popular than CF-AMF (don't know for sure) here's the important bit: PHPAMF, OpenAMF, the Adobe .NET/ Java remoting add-in and ColdFusion 6.1 remoting all use the AMF0 protocol. ColdFusion 7.02 and FlexDataServices (Java) all use AMF3 What's the diff? 2 things: Apart from some removal of dumb stuff-ups and a reduction of data packet size (thanx to new encoding), AMF3 is very strongly typed which allows a seamless (and easy) mapping/conversion between server side objects (eg: Java value objects and ColdFusion's CFC's). This is why FlexBuilder can have a simple wizard to take your CFC and create Actionscript classes from it (and/or visa-versa). Before it was all manual with a tonne of testing (eg string to numeric conversions, etc). [NOTE: the follow paragraph is total speculation] Also, inside the latest Flash player (Flash9) there are actually 2 players. An older for backwards compatability and the latest "hot-rod" that has had some amazing improvements in functionality and speed. Expect to see the use for the older player depricated in less than 5 years (the new player in Flash9 is like starting again). AMF0 is for the older player, AMF3 for the newer. Will Adobe release their own PHPAMF using AMF3? I'm not sure, since they aren't bothering to upgrade the .NET/ Java remoting add-in (I've checked). But if they do, you can be assured that they will charge well for it - just like the .NET/ Java remoting add-in (almost as much as a CF licence). Will the PHP community re-engineer their remoting for AMF3? Quite possibly. they're smart people. But I haven't herd anything yet.... my gut feeling? Adobe will try and push remoting onto everyone so they can take up Flex 2 and buy Flexbuilder. they'll have to support it somehow. see the note below about WebOrb... ADDENDIUM I have deliberatly not mentioned 2 products: WebOrb, a pricey but full featured product that is an alternative to FlexDataServices (and runs AMF3) for .NET and Java - and - (comming soon) PHP and Ruby! (http://www.themidnightcoders.com/index.htm) Fluorine, an open source project for Flash (AMF3) and .NET (http://fluorine.thesilentgroup.com/fluorine/index.html) __._,_.___ -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com SPONSORED LINKS Web site design development Computer software development Software design and development Macromedia flex Software development best practice YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS  Visit your group "flexcoders" on the web.    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]    Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. __,_._,___