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Using Flex 3 with BlazeDS and Java (JEE) training course released by Comtaste (London,Milan,New York)

Comtaste Training is proud to announce its new training course about Flex 3 development using BlazeDS. The course is the result of several enquiries made by our clients about those topics.
I've worked on the outline of the course and it's ready and I've just published it on the italian section of Comtaste's site (I'm working on the english outline for this training course):

Enterprise Flex Applications: Using Flex 3 with BlazeDS and Java (JEE)

The Flex 3 and BlazeDS course adds to Comtaste's course programs and it is the open source alternative to the Enterprise Flex Applications:Using LiveCycle Data Services and J2EE (Java EE) training course.

The Flex 3 with BlazeDS is a 3-consecutive-day lessons and we're scheduling it in the following three locations: London, Milan and New York City.

Enterprise Flex Applications: Using Flex 3 with BlazeDS and Java (JEE): Overview

BlazeDS is the open source technology released by Adobe and based on Java Remoting and web messaging. BlazeDS allows developers to easily connect to J2EE distribuite (Java Enterprise)architecture and to carry out real time data pushing to Rich Internet Applications created with Flex 3 or to desktop applications created with Adobe AIR. BlazeDS uses AMF format to transfer data in binary mode, a technique that increases the performance of the application compared to XML or SOAP formats. In this course we will illustrate the techniques to install, configure and connect Flex and AIR applications to BlazeDS in Java server logic, and how to exploit the characteristics of this technology.

Training objectives
The final laboratory of this course will allow participants to built complex and interactive Enterprise applications distributed in Java Enterprise JEE architectures.

Enterprise Flex apps with Livecycle DS and BlazeDS

Tomorrow I'll be in Adobe Italy headquarter in Milan to present the following event : Enterprise Flex Applications with LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS.

During the event I'll show examples,  share development approaches to use Flex, LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS in enterprise contexts (mainly with J2EE). The event is based on Comtaste's courses oriented to enterprise Flex 3 development :

• Enterprise Flex Applications: Using LiveCycle Data Services and J2EE (Java EE)
• Enterprise Flex Applications: Usign Flex 3 with  BlazeDS and Java (JEE)

If there'll be the time I want to discucss about the benefits of using AIR  in enterprise's world. 
So if you want to know more about the features of BlazeDS and Livecycle DS my advice is to partecipate. See you there !

The event is totally free but you need to register to it.

Flex, Livecycle Data Services, BlazeDS and AIR development for the Enterprises

For Adobe Italy Comtaste has created a series of  free events where we'll talk about the use of Flex, Livecycle Data Services, BlazeDS and AIR development in enterprises contexts.

The first event will be in Rome on June 18 : AIR development for Enterprise desktop applications

We'll show how to create desktop applications using AIR and how to integrate them to JEE enviroments with  LiveCycle Data Service and BlazeDS.

The second event was scheduled in Rome on July 2 and Milan on June 25. The tile of the event is  Enterprise Flex Application with  LiveCycle Data Services.

The events are totally free but you need to register on the Adobe Events site.

Grails plugin for Adobe Flex, Livecycle DS and BlazeDS

Grails is growing more and more and it's gaining an important role over the Java community. Grails is an open-source web application framework that leverages the Groovy language (a cool dynamic language) and complements Java Web development. The Grails framework is built on top of  Spring , an establised enterprise framework. 

The community is huge and you can now find a lot of interesting and useful plugin system  to speed up andintegrate integrates Grails with technologies Java people care about like GWT, DWR, JMS, IntelliJ, search operations are based on Luceneand and others.

Recently a new plugin for Adobe Flex, Livecycle DS and BlazeDS  is available for the Grails framework:

Grails Flex Plugin

the installation of the plugin is very easy. It's enough to launch it using this command line :

grails install-plugin flex

And you'll be ready to specify a Grails service as a remoting destination for Blaze DS or Livecycle DS using the expose property to your service class :

static expose = ['flex-remoting']

Grails is a framework for which I'm very eager to know more. I hope this summer I'll find the time to write some tutorials about the use of Grails plugin for Adobe Flex, Livecycle DS and BlazeDS.

Grails plugin for Adobe Flex and BlazeDS features

* Automatic configuration of Flex related web descriptor elements - For Flex to work configuration of servlets etc. are required in the web descriptor. This plugin automatically does this configuration.
* Eposing Grails services as Flex remoting destinations - When using Flex remoting services each Java service need to be configured within Flex using xml configuration. When exposing Grails service classes with this plugin this configuration is not needed anymore. The service class will automatically be registered within the Flex message broker.
* Participation in reloading of exposed Grails services - This plugin participates nicely with the reloading facilities of Grails. When creating new services or exposing existing services, they will be registered in the Flex message broker without restarting the application
* Embedded BlazeDS libraries
* Embedded Flex Webtier Compiler - When installing this plugin it will automatically install the Flex Webtier Compiler to your web application (within the WEB-INF folder). In development mode this Webtier Compiler is automatically enabled.

Back from the FITC. Hot impressions and feedbacks

The FITC is over and I'm back to my work in my Rome office. They were 3 fantastic days very  intensive where I had the opportunity to meet some old friends and new ones.

Carlos‘ and Ralph’s sessions were very inspiring to me and they showed a lot of cool things and ideas (ehi Ralph you've missed my session so you have to owe me a beer next time ;)).
Data Visualization with Flex and AIR by Nico Lierman was great and I loved the Google Analitycs examples  he showed us.

Aral' session was very original, as usual, and it was very fun to see the small pig pet flying in the room during the session :)
Unfortunately I've missed the Peter's and Koen's session but I met a lot of people that partecipated and they told they made an excellent job. Ehi friends it was a pleasure to spend all the time with you !

My talk was titled Flex Solutions for your daily development and my plan was to give some quick and useful tips and tecniques to use for your Flex development. The crowd seemed very Flash-oriented so I hope it was interesting for all the audience.

The agenda of my talk was very busy and it was not easy to cover all these topics in one hours (in fact my session was 15 min lates ;)) :

How to architecture Flex application
Use the open source library
How to optimize the use of RPC class with the AsynchToken
Trace Network traffic
Debug applications using the Logging APIs
Flex Builder IDE Optimizations
How to overcome the cross domain policy
Using the Proxy Service of BlazeDS
Focus on Flex 3 new features: the new Collection classes and the AdvancedDataGrid
Flex Inspirational Quotes

In the late evening I'll publish the slides and the source code of my talk at FITC.

Passing connection-level credentials to the JMSAdapter of BlazeDS

In order to create a multi user Flex application, you can take advantage of one of the feature of LiveCycle Data Services: the Messaging Services. The Messaging Services allows you to connect your Flex application to a message destination and send/receive messages to it from other clients.
You use the JMS adapter to subscribe to JMS queues configured on an implementation of the Java Message Service. The Java Message Service (JMS) API is a Java Message Oriented Middleware  API for sending messages between two or more clients.
The LiveCycle Data Services 2.5.1 uses the JMS message adapter to communicate with messaging systems and to transport messages to and from a destination over a message channel. A destination specifies an id attribute to provide a public name for clients to use when sending messages.

The Flex application can use as message channel one of the protocol supported by the Flash Player: Action Message Format (AMF3), Realtime Message Protocol (RTMP), and XMLSocket.
When working with the Messaging Services you have to configure message destinations, apply security to message destinations, and modify logging settings. You configure the JMS adapter individually for the destinations that use it.

One of the limit if the Messagin Services of Livecycle Data Services is the inability to define a username and password in the configuration file to pass them to the JMS.
I discovered that in BlazeDS there is a new JMSAdapter that allows you to set the connection-level credentials passing the username and password.
The new connection-credentials XML node sets the the username and password used while creating the JMS connection.As the documentation said, use only if JMS connection level authentication is being used :

<destination id="chat-topic-jms">
    <properties>
...
        <jms>
            <destination-type>Topic</destination-type>
            <message-type>javax.jms.TextMessage</message-type>
            <connection-factory>jms/flex/TopicConnectionFactory
            </connection-factory>
            <destination-jndi-name>jms/topic/flex/simpletopic
            </destination-jndi-name>
            <delivery-mode>NON_PERSISTENT</delivery-mode>
            <message-priority>DEFAULT_PRIORITY</message-priority>
            <preserve-jms-headers>"true"</preserve-jms-headers>
            <acknowledge-mode>AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE</acknowledge-mode>
            <connection-credentials username="sampleuser" password="samplepassword"/>
            <max-producers>1</max-producers>
        </jms>
    </properties>

For many developers this new features supported by the JMSAdapter could be very appreciated and could solve problems in many different scenarios where the authentication is required in JMS.

BlazeDS Release Candidate released

On 1st February the BlazeDS Release Candidate was released on the Adobe Labs.
BlazeDS is the server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Flex and AIR applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences.
BlazeDS has been released by Adobe as open source and the source code will be available for download early 2008.