Satish Kore

Congratulations to all winners, and thank you so much for having me on JavaRanch. It was pleasure being here.

Thanks,

I don't see any obvious reason on why your parameters are not forwarded to the secured page. However I tried this scenario on my setup and here is what I found out.

If you are using self-signed certificate then Internet Explorer will show you warning page that it does not trust the certificate and this warning is shown before actually invoking your secure URL. At this point IE actually has lost all the parameters that you have passed in your POST request. Firefox seems to be smart since it reposts the request once you confirm the certificate warning message and hence it works on Firefox. But IE8 does not repost the request for some reason.

So once you confirm the certificate warning just hit refresh on your Flex application IE window again and it should work this time, test it.

I don't have any solution to this but workaround is to trust and install the certificate into your browser permanently and it should solve your problem for now.

Thanks,

Kiran,

In web architecture having direct connectivity with database from client side is a dangerous wish, be it Java or any other technology so in Flex having no direct database connectivity was intentional, read my below reply on one of the other thread

Flex does not have any API to connect directly with database that is justified since Flex essentially runs on client side inside Flash Player plug-in of your browser as compared to JSP that gets executed on the Server side and only 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

Flex integrates very closely with Server side technologies such as Java/PHP/.NET etc. you can always have database connectivity logic in middle tier and that is advisable. I have covered the database connectivity part in my book thoroughly.

Thanks,

Your question isn't specific to any issue. For that matter any badly written application would take time to load even if it is developed in traditional technologies such as JSP, PHP, ASP etc.

Flex applications run on a client side so first time you visit the url, it will take time (depends on application size) to load it and it will be cached for further use, so the next time you visit it will be loaded in no time.

Thanks,

Yes, it is entirely possible to develop Flex applications without Flex Builder using some of the open source IDEs which provides few good features if not all such as debugging, code hinting, syntax coloring, compilation and so on. have a look at the list http://www.riaspace.net/2009/01/flex-developer-tools-ides/

Not sure if I understand the issue entirely but to make Flex application work on https/SSL you just need to use secure amf or secure http channel for your RemoteObject and HttpService and you will be able to fetch data from your server over SSL.

Thanks,

There are open source and commercial third party IDEs but none of them have all the features that is provided by Flex Builder, have a look at the list http://www.riaspace.net/2009/01/flex-developer-tools-ides/

Flex supports CSS but it has got its components and therefore different selector names and style properties. All traditional CSS styles may not be applicable as is.

Matt Holloway wrote:I'm very interested in the use of Flex for the UI with Java as the server side. Do you cover using Spring integration with Flex? How about Grails? Also, what IDE setup do you cover in the book? I'd like to see development options with opensource rather than having to purchase Flex Builder from Adobe.

I am covering Flex Builder 3 in this book, that is Eclipse based official IDE for developing Flex/AIR applications, however I have not covered Spring integration and Grails in this book.

Visit following URL for your choice of IDEs for Flex development.

http://www.riaspace.net/2009/01/flex-developer-tools-ides/

Thanks,

Karl,

Flex applications are rendered and executed inside Flash Player and in all browsers the Flash Player is installed as a plug-in. Flash Player has been developed and tested across multiple OS/Browser combinations for consistent in behavior and performance, and in most application you don’t really need to worry about cross browser support issue since Flash Player takes care of it. However there are few areas where Flash Player still depends on client machine’s hardware capacity one of it for using hardware-acceleration and for hardware-accelerated scaling to work, you need certain hardware configuration see (http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help01.html#117103). And this is the one you might need to consider while developing Flex application that utilizes hardware-acceleration for Video playback or Image rendering.

Flash Player is always tested across multiple platforms/browsers see system requirements that Adobe recommends (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/).

If the application is developed sluggish then you would see performance degradation and this is true for any programming language.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Hi Barry Raczkowski,
There are few major changes between Flex 3 and 4 such as Skinning, Namespace, Component architecture etc. to know more about it visit http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex4sdk_whatsnew.html and http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex3and4_differences.html.

Adobe is working on light weight Flex framework for Mobile devices that can be used for developing mobile applications but this project is in initial stage and expected to be available in 2010. Have a look http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/mobile/

Thanks,

Paras,
I am sure that you will find this book interesting and it will help you to get started with Flex programming.

Thanks,

Hi Ramu,

Thanks for posting.

I have covered WebService, Servlet, JSP and POJO in this book.

Thanks,

Hi Mourad,

I have no experience on JSF so it might not be appropriate for me to give a comparison. But I am sure you will find Flex much more powerful and flexible when compared feature wise. I suggest you to go through Flex features introduction (http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_3:Feature_Introductions).

could your book help me to persuade my project manager to use Flex ?

That I can assure you

Thanks,

Flex application are compiled into .SWF files and SWF files are rendered and executed by Flash Player either in browser or stand-alone. When you are developing Flex applications to run in browser it makes no sense to send raw SWF files. Usually Flex applications are packaged as an web archive .war file and like any other web project and deployed on your web server such as Tomcat.

Thanks,