Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Macromedia Flex
Macromedia Flex is an application server initially released in March of 2004. In short it is a J2EE application that compiles on the fly Flex mark up language (MXML) and Actionscript into Flash applications.
The goal of Flex is to allow Web application developers to easily build "Rich Internet Applications", otherwise known as RIAs. In a multi-tiered model , Flex applications serve as the Presentation Tier. These applications were already possible using Macromedia Flash MX 2004; however for non Flash developers many found it challenging to develop in an animation based environment.
Leveraging existing Flash capabilities, Flex allows developers to focus on their business logic using an XML based language called MXML, yet harness all the rich UI features that are associated with Flash. Flex comes with various components and features that make capabilities such as web services, remote objects, drag and drop, sortable columns, charting/graphing, built in animation effects, and other interface interactions simple. Since the client only loads once, application workflow is significantly improved versus HTML based applications (eg. JSP, PHP, CFMX ) which require executing templates on the server with every action. Also because of its nature, Flash/Flex applications have data completely decoupled from design.
Since MXML files convert to Actionscript, Flex developers can code components directly in Actionscript. The Flex server also acts as a gateway to allow the client to communicate with XML Web Services and Remote Objects (such as Coldfusion CFCs, Java Classes, and anything else that supports the Action Message Format).
Targetted towards the Enterprise, Flex is currently priced as US$15000 per CPU. An alternative to Flex is the Laszlo Presentation Server, an open source project.
Limitations of the technology are mostly a result of limitations in the Macromedia Flash player. In that because logic is pushed onto the client, large applications can require a fair amount of CPU power to run smoothly. Another large challenge is that the Flash player will not allow file upload, making it difficult (not impossible) to make content management based applications.
Release history
- Flex 1.0 - March 2004
- Flex 1.5 - October 2004
External links
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