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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.

James Ward's interview about Flex, AIR, LiveCycle Data Services, the AMF protocol and much more !

In this interview from QCon San Francisco 2007, James Ward discusses Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), Flex and AIR, how Flex helps in the development of RIAs, the changes in ActionScript 3, the Tamarin engine, desktop and offline capabilities, Flex Builder, the Flex developer community, LiveCycle Data Services, the AMF protocol, RIA development trends, and the Flex component model.

One  of my favourite James' answer is the one about Livecycle Data Services. It's the same answer I use to give to customers who ask me about that :

To really build a Flex application, do I have to have LiveCycle Data Services or are there other options to me in terms of integrating with the backend?        

That's a great question. LiveCycle Data Services is something that is optional, but it's something that does a add lot of value. It adds the AMF protocol which is a great serialization protocol to more efficiently move you data across the wire, it adds publish and subscribe messaging, data synchronization capability, PDF generation, WSRP provider support, a bunch of things that people may need or want, but it's not required. You can connect any Flex application built with all the free stuff, the free SDK, to your web services, SOAP web services, RESTful web services, JSON, so there's lots of different ways to do that. There's also open-source products that provide some of the functionality of LifeCycle Data Services that people have looked at too.

Has James got the beard ? Hey man you look so serious with the beard ;)
See you soon !

New Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.6 aligned with Flex 3 and AIR

This month Adobe has released the  Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.6. This new version supports the releases of Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3 as well as AIR 1. Moreover it's now possible to define data management data sources with LiveCycle ES components, the mechanism you use to write new components with LiveCycle Foundation.
Other new Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.6   features and enhancements :

• single-signon for LiveCycle remoting applications, LiveCycle services which use the enumerated data type, and provide the ability to push changes to Flex clients in real-time from LiveCycle processes.
• Improved RTMP Performance and Scalability
• Supports more concurrent users on the same server infrastructure.
• Scalable HTTP Based Channel
• Supports thousands of connections for each Java process.
• Data Management Offline Improvements :using the SQL database contained in Adobe's AIR runtime, we can use the offline support introduced in LC DS 2.5.1 to persist data directly to a SQL database.
• Data Management Improved Subtype Support
• Data Management and Hibernate Improvements

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.

Adobe AIR Job Trends

I was wondering what the job trends for Adobe AIR developers was. It's fun to see how much time the word "Adobe AIR" appears in job postings around the globe. The following graph shows this trend from which you can understand how the AIR Developer job position will grow in the next future :

 

"adobe air" Job Trends

"adobe air" jobs

If you compare thi graph to the one that uses "Adobe Flex"  as words, you can see how they look similar.
The job trends for Flex developers is growing more and more and more as you can see from the  graph :

" adobe flex" Job Trends

"adobe flex" jobs

Have also a look at the growth of Flex Data Services jobs. Cool !!
For what concerns our experiences it's a great momentum for Flex Data Services (or Livecycle Data Services) in Europe. We are making a lot of interesting consulting activities on this stuff (FDS, Flex, LCDS) and we receive  a lot of requests !

Flex and AIR training courses catalog published for 2008

Today I've updated the AIR course that Comtaste is delivering in Italy. The course is based on the Beta 2 and it covers the development of AIR applications with Flex, AJAX and Flash Cs3.
Moreover we've also published a calendar with the date for next 6 month of 2008.

We offer ad hoc didactic planning, courses according to catalogue and to calendar. The value of our offer is in the direct transfer of the experience acquired in the field.
At this moment this is our course catalog :

TITLE: Flex 2 and Flex Builder 2 - Developing Rich Internet Applications
DATE: Rome 21 - 24 January 2008, Milan 11 – 14 February 2008

TITLE: Programming ActionScript 3 for Flex 2
DATE:     Rome 28 - 30 January 2008, Milan 25 – 27 February 2008

TITLE:  Enterprise Flex Applications with LiveCycle Data Services e J2EE (Java EE)
DATE: Rome 3-6 March 2008, Milan 31 March–3 April 2008

TITLE: Developing desktop applications with Adobe AIR, Ajax and Flex
DATE: Rome 17-20 March 2008, Milan 14 –17 April 2008

TITLE: Flash Media Server 3 – Developing Rich Media Applications
DATE: Date to be confirmed

Report from the one-day training on SAP Interactive Forms and Livecycle integration

Yesterday we had a one day training held by Rob Mennen, Solution Architect from SAP about the integration between SAP Interactive Forms and

This is a report of the first part of the day where Rob introduced the deal of SAP and Adobe and the gave us an introduction on Interactive Forms and Flex integration.

Integration and Optimization of Forms-Based Processes
The agenda:

The SAP - Alliance
SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe
SAP Interactive Forms Solution
Technology Basics

SAP is trying to focus on User productivity and Usability. Nothing new : separate the business logic from the graphic user interface.

What is the Netwaever Business Client ?

In principle, the NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC) is a rich client that can access all of SAP's business applications. It runs not only new Web Dynpro or Visual Composer applications but also classical Dynpros, BSP pages, analytic dashboards, iViews, portal pages, etc. The data exchange between NWBC and the NetWeaver server is based on standards and open services. Today the client is based on Microsoft technology.

Adobe is good upon UIs. SAP is good on the backend side. So they made a great deals.

Original strategic partnership contract signed in 2002. Initial focus on integration of Adobe forms technology into SAP NetWeaver:
    - provide industry leading and easy to use form printing capabilities
    - accessibility
    - extend SAP business processes to occasional and offline users with interactive PDF forms

Launched Interactive Forms by Adobe beginning 2005. Software shippinh to SAP signed in March 2005:
    - generation of Adobe Flex and Flash with SAP Visual Composer (it is a tool for analysts)
    - integration of Adobe Flex in SAP NetWeaver that create compelling Analytical Applications (Flex Based applications)
    - various Flex applications to be shipped in future releases of NetWeaver

Adobe Connect to be embedded in SAP - LMS product line (EMEA launch Q1 2008).
Rob showed an AIR demo created by SAP that was a mash up application (integrated with Yahoo Maps) that drilled into  detailed information.