Te ch n i c a l W h i t e Pa p e r S e r i e s

RIA & Flex

Flex is the application building framework from Adobe which adds a lot of value in developing application for Rich UI and better user
experience. Lets begin with Rich Internet application development.
What is Rich UI?
UI looking like Windows application, Swing application with widgets like Tabbed pane etc. HTML does not provide any standard tags
for these complex widgets. There are frameworks – server-side and client side which does the trick.
What are the RIA options present?
If we look into the space of RIA frameworks different names will come into pictures – AJAX frameworks, JSF, Open Lazlo, Flex, Applets.
AJAX frameworks: AJAX frameworks are java-script based frameworks – which uses some java script functions plus some Java script
libraries to develop Rich UI. People with HTML/JS skill-set can work with this easily. Cross browser support for all browsers is not
present in all the libraries.
JSF: Sun has put a lot thrust behind this so that this becomes a front end framework. Its server-side – which means tag library driven
and its HTML. There are frameworks like Jboss seam – which tries to put together UI framework and back-end frameworks together to
provide seamless integration between layers.
JSF in action: http://www.irian.at/myfaces/home.jsf
XUL – XML based UI development for Mozilla and Firefox. Do not seem fully supported by IE. IE7 has support of XAML which is
Microsoft version of XUL.
Applets and applet based frameworks: There are a few Applets based RIA options like Canoo (http://www.canoo.com/ulc/). Although
Applet has features to build RIA applications its biggest disadvantage continues to be the limited availability of the current version of
the technology in Web browsers. Lack of Microsoft support is also part of the reason. Compared to Flex the arguments will be XML
based UI development in Flex is an easier programming model than purely java code driven layout design.
Java-script Vs Flash?
Why java and .NET became popular – since its platform independent- i.e. the cost of software development goes down. Same reason
applies for flash since it provides a programming model for developing web application tier which is browser independent – thus the
development and testing becomes less time-consuming for developing cross browser compliant applications. For all browsers Flash
players are available which allows one to develop Web applications quickly – since we testing time is less and less error prone
programming model where users don’t have to choice of using browser specific java script or CSS in the first place.
Open Lazlo: Flash based. The programming model is similar to Flex (MXML/Action-script) Vs XML-Java-script. It can generate RIA in
Flash as well as DHTML.
Couple of arguments which holds against Open Lazlo compared to Flex:
i) IDE support needs improvement.
ii) Flex is backed by Adobe instead of a group of developers.
iii) Flex is enterprise application framework instead of UI only framework.
Is Flex a RIA framework?
The answer is Yes and NO. Yes since it supports RIA development and No because it is much more than that. It has a set of features
under data-services where it provides features like server push, polling which adds a lot of values to enterprise applications.

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Is Flex free?
For RIA application development - the SDK is free. Yes, if you want to use your own editors and command line features for compiling
the MXML to flash then its free.
The Flex SDK which is free and includes the Flex libraries, the compiler (mxmlc), the debugger, and the documentation.
Flex Data Services (FDS), an optional set of server-side components deployed in your J2EE application server. FDS includes a Java
RPC service (sample 3), publish/subscribe messaging (samples 6 and 7), and data management services (sample 8). FDS is free
for a single-CPU deployment (FDS Express), and is licensed per CPU when deployed on multiple CPUs.
FlexBuilder, an optional IDE for Flex development. Built as an Eclipse plug-in, FlexBuilder includes a design view and a code view,
code hinting, visual debugging, etc. FlexBuilder is licensed on a per developer basis.
Optional charting components licensed on a per developer basis.
We can develop and deploy Flex applications entirely for free using the SDK and the IDE of our choice.
However Flex builder is what developers should adopt – for quick design, preview and compilation, debug and bunch of other features
which is present. Not expensive ~ 1000$. We have licenses to be used.
The server-side components for Flex data services (in multi-CPU mode) are comparatively expensive and we have licenses for this as
well.
Learning Flex: How difficult is it?
Flex is rather new but concepts are not. People with Action script or Java backgrounds with object oriented concepts seem to pick up
Flex well. I hear some people say that “Client server days are back” - i.e. there is a good degree of similarity between Client server
programming with VB, or Swing applications and Flex UI widgets, containers etc.
Gotcha’s
Is it all golden? Well – its not.
Few browser/platform compatibility issues: We have come across a few differences in behaviors between Safari in Mac and IE -
Windows. I will say that’s just one instance. Other than that it was pretty smooth sailing as far as testing goes across browsers.
Support of Test Automation tools:
Limited. Only with QTP which is a commercial software. A lot of the tools don’t recognize the Flex objects. Few open source tools are
there but quite primitive in nature.
How to work with QTP 9.1 and Flex 2.0.1?
Please note, earlier versions of Flex is not supported by QTP. Only 9.1 supports Flex automation. For QTP 9.1 and Flex 2.0.1 – here is
the steps
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/lin/archives/2007/01/tips_for_config.cfm
Workaround: If not planning to buy or use trial versions for QTP - develop unit test cases for business tier. The UI widgets from Flex are
well tested – and thus regression are more expected to be there in the Business Logic tier and for end to end testing we can manage
by using manual testing.
Support of Performance engineering tools:
Limited. Only one which works is Silk performer – which is commercial software.
Open source tools do not work for all scenarios – reason Flex allows to communicate with back-end over many protocols - RTMP(s),
AMF(s) and HTTP(s). Out of this Server push is done over RTMP and most of tools support HTTP primarily. Silk Performer supports
HTTP and AMF.
Adobe lab has a tool for load testing flex applications which tests for data services.
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_Stress_Testing_Framework
As most load testing tool vendors have not yet released support for RTMP(s) or the latest version of AMF(s), the Flex Data Services
Stress Testing Framework allows Flex developers to load test their applications that use RTMP and AMF3 without needing to use a
commercial testing tool.
Different tool vendors are working towards adding support for Flex/Flash applications and expected to release in near future.

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Workarounds: Open source tools like Jmeter provides ways for load testing web services.
http://dev2dev.bea.com/pub/a/2006/08/jmeter-performance-testing.html
Thus we can expose the middle tier services as Web services and do load testing at the back end tier. Most of the UI is residing in
client and don’t add a whole lot of performance overhead. So overall application performance will be – backend performance plus
data transfer time.
I have AJAX enabled application – can I use it with Flex?
Flex can be adopted in pieces – Ex: If we have a real time monitoring system needed in an application we can just use Flex for that –
no need to re-architect the entire application.
Yes; http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex-Ajax_Bridge
What happens if I get stuck during development – can I Google and find the answer?
The community is fast growing. There are forums which help to answer questions other than a pretty well documented help docu-
ments. I would say there will be some cases we will need to rely on documentation vs quick solutions from the forums. There are code
cookbooks which are being growing so overall help is there and growing.
Forums:
FlexCoder Yahoo group
Cflex.net forum
Adobe Forum on Flex – found some useful responsibility.