Flex 3 Question for Satish Kore - Web Services and Databases Interactivity

[Preston Thornton]

Good Morning from Wayne State University in Metro Detroit:

Flex 3 is about to make a big splash in the University Realm within the United States and around the world as most colleges and universities are use Sungard's BANNER ERP software (www.sungardh.com) for student and administrative operations. In the version 8 release of Banner and onward, SCT has enabling the Flex 3 technology for use with their web based self service modules. As part of the enterprise software developer team, we have been told to "Flex and Java up, quickly!," as this is the new direction we are going. The Banner Flex community, and myself have been scrambling to find answers to a number of questions as follows:

1) How much of Web Services and Java/JSP do you need to know in order to use Flex to connect to an Oracle database (10g, & 11g)?

2) James Ward of Adobe Software recently answered this question recent at a Detroit Java User Group meeting (http://sites.google.com/site/detroitjug/) as to Flex being an advanced interactive graphical user interface which would sit on top of the underlay of Java Technology. With that being said, HTML is to MXML, and Javascript is to Actionscript, my question is this, does Flex/Actionscript have a direct database connect mechanism like JDBC? Or, is it more like Javascript in the area?

3) Do you cover a full discussion (hand-holding) of the topic of BlazeDS and how to create and use remote object for database connections within the your book?

4) Finally, is there a beginner's path of understanding how to use and maximize Oracle Application Server OAS with Flex 3 within the discussions of your book? And, if not, then could you provide some direction along this path during your week with us "greenhorns."

Thank you for your answers in advance. I will be forwarding the knowledge of your presents here with us to the Detroit and Ann Arbor Java User Groups. Please consider a future visit to Metro Detroit . . . The new stronghold for Flex Tech!

Louis Preston Thornton III, Sr. System Integrator
Enterprise Applications
Computing and Information Technology
Wayne State University

[Satish Kore]

Hi Preston,

First of all thank you for posting, I appreciate your time.

Now I will come down to answering to your questions straight

1) How much of Web Services and Java/JSP do you need to know in order to use Flex to connect to an Oracle database (10g, & 11g)?

A. It’s a vague question; I will try to be as simple as I can. To connect to database using Java/JSP you need to know Java programming language basics and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC). Oracle provides JDBC driver API for every database version that allows you to make connection with Database and execute SQL queries and retrieve results from database.

2) my question is this, does Flex/Actionscript have a direct database connect mechanism like JDBC? Or, is it more like Javascript in the area?

A. Flex does not have any API to connect directly with database that is justified since Flex essentially runs on client side inside Flash Player as compared to JSP that gets executed on Server side and result is passed to the client as HTML. So having direct connectivity from client application is not recommended and there is a risk of exposing your database credentials and table structure. However Adobe AIR provides SQL database engine for local database (SQLite) for providing offline/online functionality into Desktop based applications.

3) Do you cover a full discussion (hand-holding) of the topic of BlazeDS and how to create and use remote object for database connections within the your book?

A. Yes, I have covered BlazeDS in Chapter 6 and have given many examples using BlazeDS and completed it with end-to-end example of connecting with Database using JDBC in Chapter 13.

4) Finally, is there a beginner's path of understanding how to use and maximize Oracle Application Server OAS with Flex 3 within the discussions of your book? And, if not, then could you provide some direction along this path during your week with us "greenhorns."

A. Sorry, since I do not have any experience in OAS, I’m not qualified to answer your question on this one, however if it supports Java/J2EE then using Flex with OAS should not be different from using it with Tomcat or other J2EE application servers. I will try to find more about and will let you know.

Thanks,