> One key enterprise objection to using AMF is the
lack of AMF clients for integration.
> Would non-flash clients for AMF and Messaging help?
I can understand why it would be difficult to shell out $20K per proc for
something that is solely for the Flash platform. That's almost as much as SQL
licenses. Not feasible where I work. If you have to use Flex Data Services to
realize the full benefits of Flex, that high cost can lead teams to shy away
from the Flash Platform because the remaining benefits may be less clear.
However, aside from the cost, I don't see why anyone would have a problem with
putting middleware in place for a specific client. Non-Flash clients can use
whatever other communications protocols you like, which are possibly already in
place. Granted, you've got to test things thoroughly to make sure your existing
environment is not affected by the installation of FDS (which can be a daunting
task).
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]ups.com
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]ups.com]
On Behalf Of Ted Patrick
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 12:50 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]ups.com
Subject: RE: [Junk E-Mail - LOW] [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems -
which provides
Frank,
RPC IS LESS THAN 25% OF FLEX DATA SERVICES!!!
Flex Data Services is so much more that RPC. This entire discussion is really
FDS.RPC to WebServices.
FDS contains 4 major parts:
1. Messaging - ASMessaging and JMSMessaging
2. Data Management - Data Synchronization and Distributed ArrayCollections
3. Web Tier Compiler - Compilation of AS/MXML on the server side.
4. RPC - Remoting and WebService Proxy
Using Web Services directly affects user experience!!!
Using Web Services directly affects user experience!!!
Using Web Services directly affects user experience!!!
Web Services burns up player performance that you could be using to make the user
experience better. When working in Flash Player, everything affects
performance. If you abuse the player in one area, you limit what you can do
elsewhere before the player starts to slow down. The Flash Player (like all
software) is limited in capability; if you spend that capability doing hard
things (read Web Services) then you will not be able to do other things. On a
high quality machine, WS can take 400ms, but on a slower machine it can take
3-10 seconds for a single call and the larger the data exchanged, the worse it
gets. Not good.
With Flash Player it is important to keep things light and fast. Web Services
are abusive to the Flash Player runtime. Support is included for integration
purposes but it was really not designed as an optimized way to exchange data.
Web Services view:
Flash Player Receives XML ASCII Text
XML Parsing → XML Parsing!!!
SOAP Parsing occurs to AS Objects → Traverse SOAP Objects Recursively!!!
Objects are passed into events
RemoteObject:
Flash Player Receives AMF Data
AMF Binary Decoding → Direct to typed objects.
Objects are passed into events
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.
One of the key advantages for WebServices is the wide availability of Web
Service clients for any language. With AMF we only have one client( Flash
Player ) and several AMF servers. One key enterprise objection to using AMF is
the lack of AMF clients for integration.
Cases:
- PHP form could remote to FDS
- C++ application joins FDS messaging as a client
- Java process remotes to FDS
- Python process remotes to Data Services for Ruby (MidnightCoders)
- C# remotes data with FDS as a client
Part of the distributed computing revolution is the realization that anything
can be both a client and a server. One of the problem areas in FDS is that only
Flash and Java:JMS can participate within the FDS as clients.
Would non-flash clients for AMF and Messaging help?
Regards,
Ted Patrick
Flex Evangelist
Adobe Systems Incorporated
________________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]ups.com
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]ups.com]
On Behalf Of Franck de Bruijn
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 10:33 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]ups.com
Subject: RE: [Junk E-Mail - LOW] [flexcoders] Re: Choice of backend systems -
which provides
Hi Ted,
We all understand your arguments 1 and 2. But in the end, and that’s already
identified in this topic, it’s the user experience that counts. If it does not
suffer by using web services, it’s not an issue! I’d like to hear the first
story that changing webservices by AMF increased the user experience
significantly and sealed a certain business proposition.
For argument 3 ‘Developer Productivity’ it’s true that developers need to
program more lines of code to obtain the same result (having your webservice
result as an ActionScript object), which is, I admit, error prone. But in the
total view of the costs of a development project ... it will not make much of a
difference. The actual additional lines of code I’m talking about, however, are
very easy to generate from a model if you wish.
Again, FDS is cool, really true and it does have its place. But for many
applications FDS (including the extra features messaging and data management)
is neither an option nor necessary.
Cheers,
Franck
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