Data push to flex application from .net backend

Question

Hi All,

I'm about to go into a large scale application (client-flex, server-.net). The server side is required to push data to the clients without them asking for it, this data can be tables from the DB or simply 2 integers the application needs to consider.

I tried to consider WebOrb.net for the job but the documentation is very poor and the support simply does not exist (wanted to buy the enterprise license).

I'm looking for a server side solution that can push data from .net application and sql server to flex clients using AMF, it should be very efficient with traffic and data volume.

The connection must not be one that is blocked by firewalls because the application should be accessible as possible to every client everywhere.

Any decent solution? BlazeDS? - can it work with .net? stable? LifeCycle? Can it work with .net? stable? WebORb.net? anyone has another impression of that server and has better experience than I had with them?

I would love your answers.

Thank you very much, Avi

Answer 1

The easiest way I know of doing this is just to constantly listen with long timeouts (Long polling). There is AMF.NET to give you the .NET support you need. I think LiveCycle has support for other types of data push, but BlazeDS can only support long polling.

Answer 2

You should check http://www.fluorinefx.com/ It's open source and as good as weborb. They both have mailing lists and with the installation lots of examples (also how to push data to a client). If you're working with .net, I would recommend FluorineFx, as it is free. WebOrb is free to use, but in production environment, you can only have 5 ip's connected. (there's also a community edition, but I don't know if you can use that in production).

They also support MSMQ!

In this example you can see how to push data to flex. With FluorineFx it's the same.