Hi,
Aldo!
I would certainly view
Flex as more than a browser built in Flash it is server-side generated
Flash. Quite a different architecture, of course Also, I wouldnt
say that Flex deals with enterprise development workflow, per se. Just a
piece of the puzzle.
While Flash is the
important piece, Flash player makes MM very little direct money. Dont
discount Flex and its future companions (app builders, other back end
information delivery products, etc.) as insignificant. They are very
significant!
Having just been
acquired by SAP, Im currently involved in conceptualizing solutions for the
manufacturing vertical to deliver on exactly what you described
below:
<<Perhaps an integrated
presentation ( flex ) + presence + BPM + ESB + collab +
management...?>>
I totally share that
vision and think were getting really close
stay tuned! Try
to make it to SAP TechEd this year in Vienna or
Boston
-
Rick
Hi guys,
I believe you are missing the macro perspective
here.
Don't give Flex that much
importance in the long term.
After
all it is just a browser built into Flash, with a set of
tools
to allow an enterprise
development workflow.
It won't be
long till an opensource alternative pops up... it's just
a
matter of time till the osflash
community develops the pieces and
someone puts them together. No rocket
science.
Moreover, anyone with
enough money to get Flex is, most of the times,
developing for an intranet where there is full control over
the client
runtime and they would
happily switch to a less expensive alternative,
or to one that fits nicer into the workflow, even if they
have to give
up some eye candy or
functionality. Eventually Avalon and other techs
will be better practical alternatives for an important
majority.
The important piece
here is the Flash player and it's impressive
features, all bundled into one tiny
download:
- ubiquity ( 9_%
)
- consistency across platforms (
including mobile )
- rich scripting
language ( AS2 + E4X = reuse, best practices, productivity++
)
-
multimedia
- streaming, web presence
( flash comm )
I believe it is
the sum of these that will be hard to beat... this is
MM's strong card.
Don't take me wrong, I believe Flex is a wonderful tech, and
I enjoy
developing with it and
having my customers praise me for free... a
paradigm shifter. But let's not loose
objectivity.
It's like talking
about Swing, when the important piece is the JVM.
So, Flex is happening today... helping Flash gain some
respect in the
enterprise arena (
and MM make tons of money ), but old good Flash
will eventually live on, on it's own, and will evolve as
requirements
grow. Unless MM pulls
some licence trickery that changes the landscape
in the short term, of course. Who
knows.
OTOH, I believe MM has
done marvels with in making Flex hard to beat,
and I hope some more power come out of merging flex with the
rest of
the
family.
Perhaps an integrated
presentation ( flex ) + presence + BMP + ESB +
collab + management...?
The flash player can get that far, no doubt about
it.
BTW, I was attending a Best
of SAP world tour conference the other
day, going over some new netweaver features, and I
thought...
What if these guys had
built all the presentation capabilities of
netweaver with flash from the beginning! They would have the
ultimate
platform from head to toes,
from desktop to mobile, with very little
tradeoffs.
The
important thing to understand here is that the SOA trend
is
quickly pushing more and more
functonality to layers that are strongly
related to presentation: collab, presence, information
pushing, drag
and relate, high level
BUS entry points, etc.
Thus a robust
solution on this end would enhance any platform
dramatically ( this wasn't true some time ago
).
Online presence, streaming and
collab are just too real and too
powerful to overlook nowadays.
The same goes for Bea, oracle,
etc.
Team up,
Macromedia!
well, that was a
getting too OT.
Back to
work.
Best,
Aldo
On
8/1/05, Darron J. Schall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Rick Bullotta wrote:
>
> >I
also wouldn't be at all surprised to see a Flex client based on the Java plug-in
someday. When looking at the Flex class models, it has a lot of
similarities to Java rich client stuff - so who knows - maybe the Flash viewer
someday becomes classes deployed on a JVM!
> >
>
>
> I'd actually be *very*
surprised to see this. There was a Flash Player
> written in Java a long time ago that supported swf
version 2. It was
>
horrendously slow, and therefore abandoned. Granted Java has made
some
> performance improvements
since then, but how does moving from the Flash
> Player to the JVM help at all?
>
> Flash
is already available on a ton of devices, and Java's "write
once
> run anywhere" mantra
didn't pan out as much as Sun wanted it to
> especially in the mobile space. Flash is more
portable in it's current
>
codebase then it would be as a Java application, and it also runs
faster
> as native code
anyway. I don't see any reason why MM would want
to
> invest the time in a Flash
Player that runs on top of the JVM since it
> doesn't buy them performance or portability, but rather
just a new
> series of
headaches.
>
> -d
>
>
>
>
>
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--
::::: Aldo Bucchi
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