Jamie wrote: > 1) I'm assuming that Flex retains the Flash socket ability to > communication over TCP/IP?
Yes. And Flash Player 9 also allows you to make client binary socket connections in addition to the XMLSocket functionality that was seen in earlier versions of the Flash Player that were targetted by Flash. > 2) All of the extremely expensive licensing for Flex Data Services > has me a little spooked. If all I want to do is deliver a Flex Flash > app on the client that talks to a back end server over TCP/IP, I > don't need to be paying for Flex Data Services, correct? There are > no licensing fees to distribute regular Flex applications? You don't need FDS for building an application that connects to your own back-end server via TCP/IP and whatever protocol you decide to use. While I'm sure that everyone would agree that FDS is expensive, it does have a number of juicy client-server integration technologies that work exceptionally well just out of the box would probably cost just as much, if not more, to implement yourself than to simply license, among others: - Data Services (marshalling, real-time synchronization, paging) - Messaging (messaging infrastructure for multiple clients) - Disconnect Recovery (great for unreliable networks) - Functional Testing (also requires Mercury QuickTest Pro) As such FDS is probably not the right technology for simple projects that simply need to send data back and forth to a back-end server, but it's a good choice if you're building large-scale projects with Java back-ends that are expected to need to do some heavy-duty marshalling and/or real-time data synchronization. And no, there's no licensing fees for distributing Flex applications, unlike the previous version. You can even build them for free now using the SDK. > 3) If I want to do some simple 2-D pie charts, will I need to buy > the Adobe Flex Charting? Or is ther some basic charting built into > Flex? You don't necessarily need to buy Flex Charting; if you want, you can implement some basic charting components of your own using the Flash Drawing API, or perhaps do it on the server-side and just send over a bitmap for display. The core Flex framework does not come with charting components, though I suppose you could quickly re-purpose a progress bar or something similar into a low-rent bar graph fairly quickly or simply roll your own. Having used the Charting components for a handful of projects though, I must say that the Flex 2 Charting components are pretty nice, especially when compared to the much inferior ones that were previously offered for Flash. Ely's done quite an impressive job. Since there's a trial for these as well, I'd suggest that you grab the 30-day trial, put together a few charts and see how much you like it and whether it's worth it for you to license the components. Buying them will remove the watermark that gets stamped over all your charts and will also get you access to the source code should you need/wish to extend the charting components. > 4) How much easier is it to build a Flex app with Flex Builder than > with the SDK? I'll probably just download the trial and find out > myself on this one. In my opinion, lots. While I mainly do lower-level library development and don't tend to make use of the design mode much, it's great for doing quick UI layouts and you can finally nudge components around and see how they'd look without wasting multiple compile cycles just to see the result of tweaking things a couple of pixels here and there. The features that are really nice for the work I do are code outlining, code autocompletion, and real-time syntactical checking. If you've used the Eclipse IDE before for Java development, expect roughly the same features, only for ActionScript 3 and MXML, from the Flex Builder IDE. You could always add other Eclipse plugins if you'd like to support things like source-control integration and support for development in server-side languages from the same IDE. For another comparison, if you liked PowerFlashers' FDT for Flash development enough to shell out the cash for it, you won't be disappointed with Flex Builder 2. There's still quite a bit of room for improvement with Flex Builder 2, and it's still got some ways to go (e.g. refactoring support and UML code generation would be awfully nice), but the Flex Builder IDE as-is does make life a good bit more convenient and quickly pays for itself in development time saved. Jim Cheng effectiveUI
