I am evaluating this software for purchase for our UI Development teams, 50+ people. I'm posting this question here because the FLEX forum is continually undergoing maintenance which is making it temporarily unavailable until 1:00pm PST. I'm on the east coast, and although I tried over several days to connect to this forum (all after 4pm EST), the FLEX forum is always unavailable.
The question I am trying to get answered is regarding Flex Data Services. I've downloaded the files according to the instructions at: http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/2/install.html#fle xj2ee . I placed the files in my webapps directory running on tomcat. However, according to the instructions at: http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/2/install.html#tom cat, It appears I need to download additional applications in order to correctly use FDS (Java Transaction API (JTA), Java Management Extensions (JMX)). I have tried to download the JOTM 2.0.10.tgz from http://forge.objectweb.org/project/download.php? group_id=19&file_id=3926 without success. Once I try to unzip the file (I am running Windows XP Professional). I get the following error: "Error reading header after processing 0 entries." I've tried to download three different versions of JOTM, and also tried saving the tar as a zip file. However, trying to open the WinZip file returns this error: "Cannot open file: it does not appear to be a valid archive. If you downloaded this file, try downloading the file again." Has anyone been successful in downloading and opening the all important JOTM? If so, could you tell me where you got it, how you were able to open the files? Also, while I was reading the installation instructions for Tomcat at: http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/2/install.html#tom cat it is pretty complicated for a non-Java programmer to understand. I asked one of our 6-year Veteran Java developers to help me with this and he said it was a pretty complicated process for someone w/o Java programming experience. But he did say that if I can't download the JOTM, I won't be able to do whatever it is that Flex Data Services is supposed to do. I say the latter because I am still in the "Getting Started" manual going through the last of the tutorials before I start reading "Using Flex", so I'm not really sure what lessons I will be doing that require FDS to work correctly on my box. Was I wrong to think that Flex was supposed to be geared at Front- End Developers?