RE: [Junk E-Mail - LOW] [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems - which provides

[Ted Patrick]

AMF is faster in 3 fundamental ways:   Bandwidth Size – Smaller, lighter, faster!!!   Parsing Speed – Less work on both client and server!!!   Developer Productivity – Less work for developers!!!   Web Services are dependent on XML Parsing on both the client and server side. Although it’s a good story, XML parsers are not very efficient as parsing documents is an interpreted process. The Flash Player XML parser will always be dramatically slower than AMF parsing, binary formats are notoriously faster in this regard.   XML parsing additionally decays rapidly as the file size increases. Flash Player XML parsing time increase non-linearly with larger XML documents. With AMF parsing times are linear with data size. The XML decay can be attributed to the number of inner objects that need to be created during a parsing run. AMF objects are 1:1 with the data received where XML data is 1:N per Elements/Attribute.   Comparing XML to AMF is an unfair race, AMF wins every time. When you add in the overhead of WS SOAP parsing atop the base XML parser speed you begin to see performance issues. With SOAP, you interpret an XML document back into typed objects depending on the SOAP specifics used. Sure 350ms is ok once or twice, but try doing 200 transactions in this format and you will see performance issues arise. Using Web Services you are forcing the Flash Player to do allot of unneeded work. The goal is to build richer applications, not burn up player performance in crud operations.   Additionally non-proxied Web Service use suffers with Flash Player because of the browser variation in the plug-in APIS. You cannot get the 500 Errors response content in IE and thus the SOAP fault standard breaks down. In SOAP there are important messages that arrive with 500 Errors and the inability of the Flash Player to receive these is a problem. Unfortunately there is no seamless way to get 500 Errors into the Flash Player other then rewriting an HTTP Client in the Socket class. This effort would also require a new SOAP library within Flex and socket use on low ports requires a more complex crossdomain.xml configuration. Even then you still suffer the same performance issues.   Performance aside, the productivity discussion is much more important. AMF3 and Flex Data Services are wildly productive. Once you compile your Java Class and configure a destination in FDS (1 XML Element), you are done. All typing is handled, All methods are ready to run with any number of client applications. It is the easiest way to create a server side API that I know of. Actually most cases, implementing FDS will removes $20,000 of developer time wasted on implementing other data exchange for an application. FDS value is easy to see when viewed through this productivity ROI metric. If you add CF integration into FDS, you enjoy an even more productive jump. We spend so much time talking about performance but we often waste so much developer time doing mundane data exchange when things could be automated.   Having worked at Cynergy Systems, everyone needs to realize that Carson, Dave and Team are industry leading professionals at Web Services. They know SOAP better than any single consulting firm that I know of. These guys were on teams at Sybase and Microsoft building the first generation of Web Services integration servers (MS BizTalk, EAServer)!!! They have the expertise to make Web Services/JAVA work seamlessly with Flex but this is out of reach for most (unless you hire them). They can jump through flaming hoops that few developers can with the FLEX / TOMCAT / AXIS / JAVA stack. They have been down a very hard road and have learning all the tricks to making this stack work very well for their clients. Looking back and knowing what I know now about Flex Data Services much of this hard work could have been dramatically simplified and automated (but then again Flex 2/FDS hadn’t shipped yet…). FDS makes all this hard work evaporate and makes easy for anyone to exchange data like an industry leading professional.   The really funny part is that we are only talking about the RPC portions of Flex Data Services. Messaging and Data Management are really valuable features to understand and explore. These two features are 70% of the FDS product. We(Adobe) need to do a better job of making this value crystal clear.   Flex Data Services is the most productive and high performance way to exchange data with the Flash Player. Period, Hands Down, Next!   My 2 cents,   Ted Patrick Flex Evangelist Adobe Systems Incorporated __._,_.___ -- 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 Software development tool Software development Software development services Home design software Software development company 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. __,_._,___