Thanks for that explanation Jurgen - that's very helpful to see it in developer terms :-)
I presume you are just using Flex Remoting then? ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jurgen Beck Sent: 21 May 2007 17:39 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: {Disarmed} RE: [flexcoders] Re: Am I using the right technology? I'll let Mark Piller chime in on the data management aspect. They've implemented a FDS equivalent that is very nifty. On the workflow: To pull data from a data store, the flow goes like this: Flex -> WebORB -> .NET Library -> Data Store -> .NET Library -> WebORB -> Flex WebORB serializes the data/object and maps the remote class so that by the time the data arrives in Flex you have immediate access to the object elements. For example, if I want to return the contents of a data table that I pulled in my .NET class, I return it as a List Of object. WebORB serializes the data/objects in the list so that I can build an ArrayCollection with the results in Flex. Here is what it looks like practically: I have a service manager class in Flex that has a public method: public function getShippingRateTable():void { serviceStore.source = "Services.dao.ShippingRate.ShippingRateDAO"; serviceStore.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, faultHandler); serviceStore.GetShippingRates.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, getShippingRatesHandler); serviceStore.GetShippingRates(); } serviceStore is defined as a remote object: private var serviceStore:RemoteObject = new RemoteObject("GenericDestination"); The result handler looks as follows: private function getShippingRatesHandler(event:ResultEvent):void { if (event.result.length > 0) { shippingRateTable = new ArrayCollection(event.result as Array); } } My service manager class is defined as a singleton so that my returned data is immediately available throughout the application. The mapped Flex class for the ArrayCollection items is: import mx.collections.ArrayCollection; [Bindable] [RemoteClass(alias="Services.dao.ShippingRate.ShippingRate")] public class ShippingRateVO { static private var _instance:ShippingRateVO; public var ID:int; public var pounds:Number; public var rate:Number; public function ShippingRateVO() {}; } On the server side, my .NET class ShippingRateDAO has a public method: Public Function GetShippingRates() As List(Of ShippingRate) ... Return rates End Function In it I am connecting to my data store, pull the data from a data table and compile my list of objects into a List(Of ShippingRate), which I then return. That's all there is to it! WebORB does the rest. About the examples: I just checked on them and they were working fine. You may want to get with Mark Piller if you continue to run into issues. Mark also has a Yahoo newsgroup for WebORB that you can post questions to. Jurgen Mark Ingram wrote: What do you mean by full data management? I can't seem to get any of the service examples to work, I just get a dialog saying access denied and a load of other text. So does your setup look something similar to: Flex -> WebOrb -> .NET Library ? Thanks, Mark ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jurgen Beck Sent: 21 May 2007 16:42 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: {Disarmed} RE: [flexcoders] Re: Am I using the right technology? I'm doing this right now with the Standard version of WebORB. I've written my class library (wrapped in a DLL) that connects to the database. If you need full data management, you need to be looking at the Professional version at minimum. Check out the examples on the WebORB site. Go to: http://www.themidnightcoders.net/flexexamples/weborbconsole.html <http://www.themidnightcoders.net/flexexamples/weborbconsole.html> This is the management console you get with WebORB. Select the Services tab and look at the WebOrb Examples. Those are the services that have been wrapped into class libraries. You can test drive them and see the code you would need to implement them in Flex. Jurgen Mark Ingram wrote: I should also state that the reason I want to use ASP.NET Web Services or .NET Components is because I want to access a database (the result of all collaborative work will be stored there). Thanks, Mark ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Ingram Sent: 21 May 2007 16:24 To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [flexcoders] Re: Am I using the right technology? Hi Barrie, thanks for the response. In terms of collaboration, anything will do. I tried a great example using Flash Media Server 2, which was a chat client. Each client was informed when a new client joined or typed a message. That's exactly what I was looking for, as we created one the other week that was based around polling. It worked, but it wasn't elegant. The price tag on FMS seems steep too (not compared to FDS!). $4000 for 150 concurrent users? Or more users if you throttle their bandwidth. The ideal solution for me would allow data-push and be able to communicate with ASP.NET. I have looked at WebOrb, but again, $10,000 per CPU is a little high. So here are the options as I see it: Flex Data Services (LiveCycle Data Services): $20,000 per CPU Midnight Coders Data Services: $10,000 per CPU Flash Media Server: $4,000 per 150 users (unthrottled) Polling WebServices: Free (plenty of development required though) Another down side of FMS is that you can't develop in Flex Builder? And from what I've seen it doesn't use ActionScript 3? I feel awfully confused about all these similar products! Based on my requirements, what would be the best option (see above)? Thanks, ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of barry.beattie Sent: 21 May 2007 15:22 To: [email protected] Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Am I using the right technology? Hang on a sec... in giving Mark an answer, he's been landed with more jargon. Mark, I'm nowhere near the expert that Tom or others here are on this subject ... ... and there are some good blog posts around (and the Adobe site itself) with decent detail on all of it ... but... I work at a university and they're forever going on about collaboration, whether it's research partners, academics or student teams. I'm hunting for a project to put this into practice... (in a nutshell) both remoting and webservices follow the typical request/response. so any sync'ing of data needs polling so the clients can find out if server has new changes. but FlexDataServices (or LiveCycle DS now-a-days) has a handle back to each client from the server so it can push events/notifications telling the clients that the server's data has changed. this gives a pretty powerful hub-type configuration where one client commits updates on the server which can be sent back to all the other clients in a heartbeat. however, this is NOT peer-to-peer collaboration. the server is definitely in the middle of it all, receiving and broadcasting to subscribers. Which is OK if the data/documents/whatever is to be persisted and managed on the server. Keep in mind, that sort of technology isn't cheap - not compared to webservices... I'm no expert on all of this and I've got my own issues trying to work out how flex can do true peer-to-peer collaboration (no FDS). I'm also unsure what the upgrade path will be with our FlashMediaServers (FMS) while I wait for ColdFusion8 (and it's reported LCDS and FMS integration). but I do hope that's helped somewhat. Others can chime in with much better replies. this is just something quick to help lift the fog. what sort of collaboration do you need to do?
