These individuals have all inspired and/or helped me at one point in time. I’d like to take a moment to point them out and say thanks. I’ve personally either worked with, met or digitally communicated with all of these peeps. They have all helped me greatly and their insight is fantastic. You should check out their blogs or follow them on twitter to gain great Flex development advice, code, tutorials, articles, etc. Thanks to all of you very much!!!!

Laura Arguello
Laura and I worked together on an article on the Mate framework for Flash Magazine. She was instrumental in providing technical reviews and input regarding the details of the framework. Laura is the CTO at ASFusion. She specializes in RIA development using ColdFusion and Flex. She regularly gives presentations at tech conferences and user groups. She is a Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer and the manager of the Orange County Flex User Group.
Check her blog: http://www.asfusion.com/
Check her side project blog: http://www.mangoblog.org/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/instante/

Matt Chotin
Matt provided input and feedback on both the Flex Best Practices articles I authored for the Adobe Developer Connection. In addition he reviewed and provided input and feedback for the Flex 4 Overview article I authored for InsideRIA. Matt is a Product Manager for developer-focused technology after having been a software engineer for 6 years. He is the Product Manager of Flex at Adobe.
Check his blog here: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mchotin/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/mchotin/

Eric Feminella
Eric and I have worked together on several Flex and AIR projects together and he’s also provided mentoring to me. Eric is one of the best Flex developers I’ve ever worked with and one of the nicest guys ever.  Definitely an extra special thanks to Eric!! Eric is a Software Architect specializing in providing quality solutions and services for enterprise and consumer class RIAs targeting the Adobe Flash Platform and associated technologies.
Check his blog here: http://www.ericfeminella.com/blog/

Adam Flater
Adam and I started chatting on twitter in early 2008. He’s provided tons of great help and guidance on Flex, Java and design patterns to me ever since. Adam is a Technical Architect and Evangelist at Roundarch. His career has been centered on building innovative graphical user interfaces and research of emerging technology. He is also a contributor to InsideRIA and the creator of Merapi.
Check his blog here: http://adamflater.blogspot.com/
Folllow on twitter: http://twitter.com/adamflater/

Kevin Hoyt
I’ve seen several presentations by Kevin at Apollo Camp, the LA AIR Bus Tour and Flex Camp Orange Country. Kevin is probably my favorite presenter. He provides what seems to be effortless presentations that are easy to understand, interesting and just plain cool. Kevin is a Platform Evangelist with Adobe, and is actively involved with both the Flash and JavaScript communities.
Check his blog here: http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/
Follow in twitter: http://twitter.com/parkerkrhoyt/

Andy Powell
Andy is pretty much a guru in my book when it comes to Flex / server integration and development. Andy has answered a number of my questions about Java, BlazeDS and Spring integration for Flex development. Andy is a RIA developer located in the metro Atlanta, GA area.  He is currently employed by Universal Mind where he builds really cool applications with tools like Java, Adobe Flex, Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe Spry, Hibernate, Spring, & other cool technologies.
Check his blog here: http://www.infoaccelerator.net/blog/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/umandy/

David Tucker
I first noticed David’s work when he created the blog series on learning Cairngorm. He did such a great job it was amazing. He provided written explanations, code example and videos. Kudos man, I still send people there to learn about Cairngorm. David Tucker is a Rich Internet Application developer, author, and trainer. David currently serves as a Software Engineer at Universal Mind. In addition, David also blogs regularly at InsideRIA where he produces the Weekly RIA RoundUp podcast. David also recently completed the AIR 1.5 Cookbook (with a great group of co-authors) and the Lynda.com series, AIR for Flash Developers.
Check his blog here: http://www.davidtucker.net/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/mindmillmedia/

Sean Voisen
I have to send extra special thanks to Sean because he is the one that first got me into Flex development in 2006. I had looked at Flex in 2004 and 2005 but never really got into it. At that time I was doing a lot of Flash based work but Sean helped me see the light. Sean is a really cool guy and a pleasure to be around. Sean works with a lot of different technologies and probably wouldn’t classify himself as a Flex Developer. Sean has been a teacher at the Art Institute of California and has worked with companies like AOL and Adobe.
Check his blog here: http://voisen.org/
Follow on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/svoisen/

Jesse Warden
I’ve been a fan of Jesse, or jesterxl since 2003. Back in the Flashcoders mailing list days. I first noticed Jesse because he would answer what seemed like an endless amount of Flash and ActionScript related email threads. He emailed me once in 2003/2004 and helped with a question I had posted. I’ve been a huge fan of Jesse ever since. Jesse also hooked me up with the team at Enablus where I did some Flex development in 2008 and 2009. Jesse is a professional software design & development consultant. His background is in multimedia, blending art & programming together. If it’s cool, and computer related, he wants to be involved. He is currently a Flex & Flash Architect at Roundarch.
Check is blog here: http://jessewarden.com/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/Jesterxl/

Rich Tretola
I first started talking to Rich online in 2007 when he did some testing of an AIR app I had developed at that time. He provided very helpful guidance and insight to resolve some issues with the app I was having. Rich also has provided a much appreciated stream of patience and input for articles that I’ve authored for InsideRIA. Thanks again Rich!!! Rich has been building Internet applications for over 10 years and has worked with Flex since the original Royale beta version of Flex in 2003. Other than Flex, Rich builds applications using ColdFusion, Flash, and Java. Rich is highly regarded within the Flex community as an expert in RIA and is also an Adobe Community Expert. He runs a popular Flex and AIR blog at EverythingFlex.com, is the community manager of InsideRIA.com and was also a speaker at the Adobe MAX 2007 conference in Chicago and the MAX 2008 in San Francisco. He will be speaking again this year at MAX 2009 in LA.
Check his blog here: http://blog.everythingflex.com/
Follow on twitter: http://twitter.com/richtretola/

Last August I began researching and exploring the new features and capabilities in the next version of Flex, Flex 4 Gumbo. Adobe has been posting nightly builds of Flex 4 since last summer. Gareth Edwards was nice enough to help me to get set up and compiling the SDK at the time. Juan Sanchez was doing some initial blogging and Ely Greenfield released the infamous video demonstrating the new skinning techniques soon to be available. The Overview of Flex 4 (Gumbo) article was originally started as a presentation I was building in late August / early September. (I may still port the content back into a presentation in the near future. The InsideRIA Conference is coming up and a Flex 4 preso might be a good candidate for the “Call for Papers”.)

I’ll have to say this article was a labor of love. We made it through prefix and namespace issues, code updates and also various other updates to the product time line, etc. I really enjoyed working on the article and am very, very pleased that it’s finally been released into the wild. I’d like to thank Rich Tretola for his patience and help during the authoring process and would also like to send out a gigantic thanks to Matt Chotin for the time he provided to review the article. I’d also like to thank Deepa for all of the awesome content on the Adobe Open Source site, my article would not exist without it.

The new Flex 4 landscape is rich with features and improvements. Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst will empower a new sect of designers, devigners and deselopers into the world of Flex based development for the Flash Platform. I’m very excited to see what my Flash brethren bring to the table using Catalyst. I’m also very excited about the Unit Testing automation that’s available and many other developer centric updates that have been included in the Flex 4 framework and in Flash Builder.

When I first started looking into the code for how the new Spark component architecture is structured I got all warm and fuzzy. Spark totally separates the component logic from the view markup which should really standardize component development and also enable a whole new level of skinning and UX for Flex application development.

Anyone looking to upgrade their Flex 3 applications to Flex 4 please get in touch. I’m really excited to start talking about the possibilities of upgrading and refactoring to the new framework. I’m currently working on a Flex 4 application example that makes use of Cairngorm and the new version of Flex Unit so check back for that soon.

Here’s the link to my article, I hope it provides a decent overview of what’s available in Flex 4:
http://www.insideria.com/2009/06/overview-of-flex-4-gumbo.html

It should be an exciting week and the buzz about the beta release is already getting crazy! Here are a couple of important links:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex4sdk_whatsnew.html
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/
http://www.ashorten.com/2009/06/01/flash-builder-and-flash-catalyst-betas-now-on-labs/

Happy Flexing!!!

When developing Flex and/or AIR applications there are a handful of tools that really make the difference between a good project and a great project. They are all very valuable and provide stability and clarity for the RIA development process; or at least they have for me. From Unit Testing to SVN utilities to frameworks and libraries I’ve found the following ten items to be very useful and helpful. I’d even go so far as to say these are critical for quality Flex RIA development; but as Les says: “It’s just a matter of opinion.”

Cairngorm
Cairngorm is the lightweight micro-architecture for Rich Internet Applications built in Flex or AIR. A collaboration of recognized design patterns, Cairngorm exemplifies and encourages best-practices for RIA development advocated by Adobe Consulting, encourages best-practice leverage of the underlying Flex framework, while making it easier for medium to large teams of software engineers deliver medium to large scale, mission-critical Rich Internet Applications.
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm
Download: http://download.macromedia.com/pub/opensource/cairngorm/cairngorm2_2_1-bin.zip

Flex Unit
FlexUnit is a unit testing framework for Flex and ActionScript 3.0 applications and libraries. It mimics the functionality of JUnit, a Java unit testing framework, and comes with a graphical test runner.
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexunit/FlexUnit
Download: http://download.macromedia.com/pub/opensource/flexunit/flexunit0_9.zip

Subclipse
Subclipse is an Eclipse Team Provider plug-in providing support for Subversion within the Eclipse IDE. The software is released under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0 open source license.
http://subclipse.tigris.org/
Eclipse update site URL: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x

Eclipse
Eclipse is a multi-language software development platform comprising an IDE and a plug-in system to extend it. It is written primarily in Java and is used to develop applications in this language and, by means of the various plug-ins, in other languages as well - C, C++, COBOL, Python, Perl, PHP and more.
http://www.eclipse.org
Download: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

ASDoc
ASDoc is a command-line tool that you can use to create API language reference documentation as HTML pages from the classes in your Adobe® Flex® application. The Adobe Flex team uses the ASDoc tool to generate the Adobe Flex Language Reference.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=asdoc_1.html

Flex Ant Tasks
The Adobe® Flex® Ant tasks provide a convenient way to build your Flex projects using an industry-standard build management tool. If you are already using Ant projects to build Flex applications, you can use the Flex Ant tasks to replace your exec or java commands that invoke the mxmlc and compc compilers. If you are not yet using Ant to build your Flex applications, you can take advantage of these custom tasks to quickly and easily set up complex build processes for your Flex applications.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=anttasks_1.html
Installation: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=anttasks_2.html#224215

Degrafa
Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework open source licensed under MIT.
http://www.degrafa.org
Download: http://www.degrafa.org/code/

as3corelib
The corelib project is an ActionScript 3 Library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3. These include classes for MD5 and SHA 1 hashing, Image encoders, and JSON serialization as well as general String, Number and Date APIs.
http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/
Download: http://as3corelib.googlecode.com/files/as3corelib-.92.1.zip

Flex SDK coding conventions and best practices
Coding standards for writing open-source Flex framework components in ActionScript 3. Adhering to these standards makes the source code look consistent, well-organized, and professional.
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Coding+Conventions

Flex Language Reference
The Flex 3.3 Language Reference provides syntax and usage information for every element in the ActionScript™ language. It documents all elements in Adobe® Flash® Player and Adobe® AIR™ that are officially supported by Adobe.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/

The world of Flex development is pretty big and it’s expanding all the time. There are many types of applications that can be built with Flex from dashboards to widgets, media playback utilities to Enterprise RIAs and don’t forget interactive kiosks and Internet aware desktop applications. One of the most common questions that I get asked is: How/Where do I learn Flex? I think one of the keys to mastery is a successful learning path. I also think that a solid foundation goes a long way. We’ve all heard the phrase: “crawl, walk, run…”

Here are some resources that helped me learn Flex. They are organized in a somewhat sequential fashion.

Beginner

Lynda.com

• Flex 3 Beyond the Basics
• Flex 3 Essential Training
• Flex 2 Advanced: Using Data Services

O’Reilly Programming Flex 3

Adobe.com

• Flex SDK coding conventions and best practices
• Flex Examples Blog
• Adobe Flex Developers Guide
• Developing AIR applications with Flex

DClick Adobe Flex Coding Guidelines

CFlex, Community Flex

Using ASDoc

Intermeditate

AtTest (practice exam engine for Adobe Flex Developer Certification)

Flex Certification

Flexlib (open source user interface components)

Flex Unit

Subversion

• Subclipse
• TortoiseSVN

Creating Flex components

Developing Flex RIAs with Cairngorm (Steven Webster, Adobe Consulting)

David Tucker

• Getting Started with Cairngorm – Part 1
• Getting Started with Cairngorm – Part2
• Getting Started with Cairngorm – Part 3
• Getting Started with Cairngorm – Part 4

Mate Framework

• Mate website
• Mate: Event driven framework for Flex (Article for Flash Magazine by Sean Moore)

Adobe Flex Community Expert program

Papervision / Away3D

MXMLC

Flex and SWC files

Degrafa

Advanced

Livecycle

Flash Media Server

Flex Charting

ILog Charts

Particle Systems

Flint (more particles)

Paul Ortchanian (scripted 3D, particles, bezier)

Flex Modules

Flex Profiler

Flex Ant Tasks

BlazeDS

Misc. Resources:

Mike Chambers blog

Ryan Stewart blog

Kevin Hoyt

Eric Feminella blog

Ted Patrick blog

Lee Brimelow blog

Flex Show

Adobe Developer Connection

Adobe Edge Magazine

Flex.org

Adobe Feeds

Flex Camp

Farata Systems Training

Comtaste (Flex training)

Beyond Flex

Spring

Hibernate

MySQL

Oracle

JPA

Ant

Java

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

VTC - Design Patterns videos

Continuous Integration

Agile software development

SCRUM

UML

TDD

Test Driven Development by Example

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters

The Spring framework is not new, it’s been around since mid 2003. In very simple terms Spring is a framework to help build Java (and .NET) applications. Spring helps organize and orchestrate the source code for Java applications. Spring can be used with any Java application including Java web applications.
This is beneficial to Flex applications that communicate with server side Java web applications. In addition, Flex developers can now use the new Spring BlazeDS Integration provided by Spring with BlazeDS projects. Check out the awesome blog post and video by Christophe Coenraets for a walk through of the Spring BlazeDS Integration. His example project should get you up and running pretty quickly.

After reviewing the example that Chris provided I wanted to take things s step further and integrate Hibernate and MySQL into the project. I wrestled with the JAR’s, the classpath, the Spring and Hibernate XML markup, and the Hibernate Annotations for a while and then realized that I needed to get a firm understanding of some Spring fundamentals. Manning’s Spring in Action was recommended by a colleague and so far has been really shedding some light.

I was able to create a simple Spring project (no Flex, no BlazeDS, no Hibernate… yet) to help me understand some of the core Spring concepts. The IoC Container and AOP are two very important pieces of the Spring framework. This very simple project only utilizes the IoC Container. Aspect Oriented Programming is very cool and I also recommend checking it out. AOP is not covered in this example. (Check out cross cutting concerns.)

There is a simple Ant task to compile, jar and run the application. You’ll also need the latest version of the JDK for this application.

You can download the project using a Subversion client using the following URL:
http://seantheflexguy.com/applicationcontextex/

You can also download a zipped version of the project here:
http://seantheflexguy.com/java/ApplicationContextExample.zip

To run the project navigate to the directory where you downloaded the project, and extracted if you grabbed the zip. Then from the project root using a Terminal or Command Prompt issue the command: ant to compile and: ant run to run the application.

The first version of the application used a BeanFactory. This second version uses the ApplicationContext class instead. BeanFactory is in Spring’s core module, it’s the main Spring container that provides DI. The ApplicationContext module builds on BeanFactory providing additional capabilities such as: internationalization and validation support and access to the application event lifecycle.

The Simple Spring Example Project should help you understand the most basic level Spring mechanics. The only JARs required by the project are spring.jar and the commons-logging-1.1.1.jar, both are included with the project. The Ant build file will set the CLASSPATH for these JARs, if you bypass Ant make sure to set these on the CLASSPATH prior to compiling the application.

So far Spring really looks like a powerful way to organize and manage Java application development. You should take a moment to check it out. Also be sure to check out the Spring BlazeDS Integration.

Understanding more about Java is great. A good amount of knowledge can be shared between Flex/ActionScript 3.0 and Java. I’ve worked with Java in the past, compiled some applications, read the tutorials and some books, helped build a Java based LMS and also worked with Adobe on writing a simple Java socket server, but I wanted more of a thorough understanding of the language. The University of California at San Diego offers a great series of programming and software development courses. These classes are really affordable so I decided to take a Java II course. It’s been seven weeks and so far the experience has been awesome. The end goal is to become more familiar with the core Java language. My hope is that this will enable me to have greater confidence when working on Flex and BlazeDS projects. (A really cool stack I’ve been playing with recently is Flex/Cairngorm, the new Spring/BlazeDS integration and Hibernate/MySQL. Eventually I want to get this running on Glassfish. Something else I’ve been looking into.)

Some items we’ve covered in the Java class so far are: SDK installation and command line compilation, data types, control flow, variables/operators, numbers, arrays, objects and classes, static classes and methods, method overloading, object construction, constructor overloading, OOP basics, packages, commenting, generating JavaDoc, inheritance, abstract classes, polymorphism, sub/superclasses, reflection, inner classes, graphics programming, event handling, Swing and Collections including Maps, Lists, Sets and the Comparator interface. We’re compiling all of our homework using the command line. It’s pretty cool. The class also demands a pretty rigorous reading schedule. The three-pronged-learning-approach is working well for me: lectures, reading, coding (homework and labs.) The ins and outs of the language are really sinking in.

A few immediate benefits to learning more about Java are: Flex and BlazeDS / LCDS integration, strengthen fundamental OOP understanding and comprehension and also gain knowledge of OOP concepts not available in Flex/AS3. Learning Java also provides the opportunity to get exposure to Swing (Flex’s distant relative). Also, since the Flex compiler and other aspects of the Flex SDK are written in Java this opens up the door to greater understanding of the Flex SDK and even bug contributions. Java makes extensive use of design patterns and there is a plethora of existing Java code to look at, use and learn from. (Cairngorm was born from J2EE design patterns.)

There are several differences that I noticed in Java. Some items available in Java and not in AS3: static classes, abstract classes, private constructors, constructor overloading, method overloading and Collections. Working with Arrays is a LOT different, working with numbers is different, working with Strings is different and String comparison is different. There are no Hashmaps and no hashcodes in ActionScript. No equals() method. Another difference is that you have to implement your own design patterns more often in Java. Not a bad thing, and good to know how to do, but Flex takes care of a lot of things behind the scenes: events, data binding etc. I noticed that when coding Java the developer is expected to implement interfaces more often than in Flex/AS3. This is pretty cool; it involves more work but provides more power.

It’s been a cool experience and I wanted to share some of these thoughts and observations. I think more developers come into the Flex world from Java vs. the other way around. For some reason Java sort of reminds me of AS2… I may try to post some Java source code soon if time permits…

The San Diego Flash Users Group invited me to give a presentation on Flex Best Practices last night. Thanks to everyone who took the time to join the meeting. Thanks to Kyle and Chris for inviting me to present. Also thanks a lot to everyone who provided all the great feedback and questions. Dan made the journey down from the mountains to join us as well. Several attendees inquired about getting a copy of the slideshow. I think the articles that I wrote for Adobe are actually much better and cover even more material than the Powerpoint presentation. Here are the links to the articles:

Flex best practices – Part 1: Setting up your Flex project article

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/best_practices_pt1.html

Flex best practices - Part 2: Development practices

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/best_practices_pt2.html

If you would still like the Powerpoint preso email me and I’ll send it along.

There was an example application that I wanted to share as well. I’ll post it on this blog in the very near future. It utilizes many of the practices and standards covered in my presentation and the articles. I’d like to provide a little info or blog post at least along with the example…soon….

I’ll be giving this same presentation on Flex Best Practices in March at the OC Flex Users Group. Thanks to ASFusion for the invite!!

Thanks again to everyone who made it out last night. The audience was really great and had great questions and a great discussion. I appreciate everyone’s time and feedback. Thanks to Dolores for all of the help getting ready for the preso too!!

Following best practices during the development process can help organize and structure an application. Standardized development provides clarity, stability, longevity and scalability. I worked with several members of the Flex community and the Adobe Flex Team to create this article outlining over 90 best practices for the Flex development process. Thank you to everyone who helped review the article. Also thanks to everyone who provided input!! And, thanks to Adobe for the opportunity to write this!!!

Here is a short passage from the article:

“In this article, you will learn how to manage assets so that your application’s dependencies will be well organized. I will also discuss widely accepted ActionScript 3.0, MXML, and CSS coding standards currently being practiced by the Flex development community. I’ll review ASDoc, a tool that you can use to create API language reference documentation as HTML from your application’s source code. In the application architecture section of this article I’ll show techniques that you can use to help define the blueprints for your application’s foundation. I will cover some of the application development frameworks that are available to Flex developers and discuss when it makes sense to use them and when it does not. Lastly, I will cover best practices for unit testing so that you can test your codebase and ensure the code will perform consistently.”

The last year has been an incredibly exciting one to say the least. A lot has happened for Adobe, for Flex, for the Flash community, for the world at large and for me personally. Looking back on this year I wanted a visual guide to show at a glance just exactly what I have been up to for the last 12 months. I needed this for myself, potential clients, my family and anyone else interested. There are still 12 projects I need to add but here is a start for now.  I had the extreme pleasure and honor to work alongside companies like 2Advanced, Universal Mind and Adobe Consulting. I wrote two articles for the Flex Developer Center on Adobe.com, two articles for O’Reilly’s InsideRIA, an article for Flash Magazine and I did three technical reviews for Flex books.

As an pretty neat wind down to 2008 you can see some of my code that made it into the big screen at MAX last week. A couple of people were kind enough to let me know about this and as I was looking through the MAX photo stream I stumbled across a photo that showed the before mentioned code. Pretty cool! (This is some really, really basic code I released on this blog last summer to show the new Flex 4 components.) I wasn’t able to make it out to MAX this year but my I was there in mind spirit and well…code.

Sean Moore Flex Source Code at MAX 2008

Stay tuned for more exciting happenings. I’m currently reviewing another book now and I should be working on more articles in 2009. I should also be giving some presentations at some of the user groups.

Lastly I’ve been working on some music to help unwind from coding and writing.Here is a remix I did (mp3) for a track by a group Digitalism. The song is called Taken Away. Here is another track in the works too.

As always thanks for stopping by and taking a moment to peek into my little corner of the world.

In case you missed it here is a link to the article discussing the Strategy Design Pattern that was recently featured on the O’Reilly, InsideRIA website. Writing the article was a really wonderful experience and I’m extremely excited to have another in the works now. More on that later. Here is a snip of the article, full link follows.

“The goal of this article is to help you gain a better understanding of the Strategy design pattern. The Strategy pattern is used to separate the areas of an application that differ from the areas of an application that remain the same. This design pattern sits on top of several fundamental OOP principals. For example the Strategy pattern uses the concept of programming to an interface rather than an implementation. Strategy also favors composition over inheritance. The reason you would use the Strategy pattern is to abstract an algorithm from a class and create a new class based on the algorithm. Using polymorphism the algorithms can be changed at runtime by the compositing class.”

Exploring the Strategy Design Pattern
November 3, 2008
http://www.insideria.com/2008/11/exploring-the-strategy-design.html

This was a great article to write and it solidified a lot of knowledge about OOP and Design Patterns. I may write another one on the Factory Method. Leave a comment if you have any interest.

In other news I’ll also have another Flex Best Practices article being published on the Adobe website soon.

I’ve also been researching Livecycle and BlazeDS a lot recently. I managed to get both set up and working on my laptop. There are a number of similarities however the default Livecycle setup runs JBoss and the default setup of Blaze runs Tomcat. So some system tweaks were needed here and there. In addition I also had an existing installation of Oracle that really hosed things up. The Oracle installer added some items to my laptops PATH variable which resulted in quite a bit of debugging. Next I installed MySQL. That was cool and I learned a lot. I’ve done the MySQL installation before however it’s been a while (4 years’ish). The next thing I did was locate a sample database from the web to play around with. I found a pretty large sample employees database on the web and installed it. Then I started trying to remember the various SQL statements needed to retrieve data, JOINs etc. While working on all of this I also found a way to expose my Blaze server to the open web, despite the dynamically assigned IP address from my ISP. That was really cool, but super slow. I was accessing the Blaze samples from my other computer across the web however it was too slow to deal with (not sure what the problem was there, more research is needed probably my upstream.) So the next steps are going to be to write some cool SQL statements to pull data from my sample database, then setup my Blaze application instance/context, write my Java classes (integrating my SQL), set up my remoting configurations and then finally I want to build a “dashboard” and pump the data into some Flex charts. I’m really busy with client work and articles right now so who knows when I’ll be able to finish but the whole experience was fun and I learned A TON.

I’ve also been working on a cool client Flex project and sneaking in time here and there for some music. Well gotta run for now, until next time… Happy Flexing!!