How to go about a 'Flex Project Development', and how to do the right way ?? (Please Help a beginner)

Question

Hello All,

I'm gonna split this question into 'Situation' , 'Task' , 'Confusion' & 'Question' to make it easier to answer it. So, here it goes --

Situation : I'm an intern, who has to develop web service kind of thing at my company. It is important because here is where I start my journey and I am hungry to learn.

Task : My assignment would have things such as - developing forms, inputing data into a database(MS SQL Server - boss's choice), querying data from database, developing a LIVE Dashboard( giving status of machines manufacturing some thing), reading data from .txt file on shared drive and putting it into the database(I guess writing scripts to do this), generating charts for some data - basically a rich user experience & more.

Confusion : I am giving up GWT(which I know a bit), and want to choose Adobe Flex. My confusion is - I do not understand whats free and what is not, will I need Live Cycle DS, Flash Catalyst ?? Plan to buy Flash Builder, but I don't think company wants to spend more.

Question : Should I go in for flex ? and if Yes(as I want to), then do I need the components described above and some other 'flex frameworks' like 'Mate' and all. What ever it is, how do I go about all this

Please guide my poor soul through and I will be very thankful. I want to learn flex and contribute, but for that I need to work on my knowledge and so I need advice. (Also, I'm not a super Java developer)

Sorry, if this seems too stupid a question. But, I'm trying to learn in order to contribute some tomorrow.

Regards,

Chirayu

Answer 1

The Flex SDK is free. You can use it, with a command line compiler and a text editor of your choice to build and compile Flex applications.

Adobe makes money on selling tools, such as Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst. You do not need to purchase either of those.

LiveCycle is a server-based product that works with Java. The most common use is a AMF Gateway for transferring data back and forth between Flex and the server.

You don't need to use it. Many application servers have alternatives to BlazeDS and many of them are free.

An AMF Gateway is built right into ColdFusion, for example. If you use PHP you can use ZendAMF or AMFPHP. If you're a Java Shop, BlazeDS is a free, open source, version of LiveCycle.

Does that help?

In terms of frameworks, such as Mate or RobotLEgs or Cairngorm. You do not need to use one. A framework is intended to solve some problem in development. Once you figure out what problems you're going to have it may be worthwhile for you to examine the frameworks to see if one will help you solve those problems.

However, I've heard a few eople suggest that you build a few applications with Flex [or any technology] before investigating frameworks.