> I am sure there are many smart people out there who will
> get WebServices to work well for them with Flex. It is a
> lot of hard work to make this work well and I have only
> seen one company do it really well. I do not doubt that
> others will make this work reliably but I question its use.
> It will affect performance which is why AMF was created
> in the first place as an optimized data exchange format for
> Flash Player.
>
I got around this problem by abstraction and preemptively loading data
that was likely to be loaded. I made up template-like objects that the
client loaded that describe what makes a "page" of data, which included all
of the possible design elements and whatnot. That way, when you actually go
to load the data, the size of the data going to and from the server was
minimal (and compressed). And I preloaded large blocks of commonly used data
and cached them on the client side, keeping it updated by sending an MD5
hash back to the server-side to be compared to the current data set on a
regular basis or whenever that data was accessed. For a dial-up user that
might be a problem, but for a business app it didn't even cause a noticable
bump in their bandwidth usage. You just have to plan appropriately and do
thorough use cases, so that you can develop a set of rules that will tell
you what data is likely to be needed next. All the most common usage paths
through the app were fast and responsive, and only the really heavy stuff,
like real time reports that go back over tons of db records and stuff, took
any noticable time to load. The end result was 100% compatible with either
an AJAX front end or a Flash front end, the back end didn't know or care
which it was talking to.
With appropriate planning and a good architecture, which transport
method you use is almost irrelevant as long as it is flexible and
compatible. ;-)
ryanm
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