Articles by Anatole Tartakovsky

A Quick Analysis of BlazeDS Offering

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:00:00 EST

Release of BlazeDS is a great help from the Flex enterprise adoption perspective. On the technical side, BlazeDS provides a lightweight replacement for LiveCycle Data Services ES. The remoting part seems to be identical to the LCDS offering. But how the LCDS implementation is different from BlazeDS? What's under the hood?

A Complete Application with RPC Communications...

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:00:00 EDT

For security reasons (similar to the Java sandbox concept), Flash clients can only access the domains they come from, unless other servers declare, explicitly or implicitly, trust to SWF files downloaded from our domain by a corresponding record in a crossdomain.xml file. But our portfolio SWF wasn't loaded from finance.yahoo.com, and we aren't allowed to install crossdomain.xml on the Yahoo! servers. We'll use another technique called Flex proxy.

Creating PDF Documents from Flex Applications

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:00:00 EDT

There are three ways of creating PDF documents from Adobe Flex applications: by using the forms/LiveCycle designer,by treating PDF printing as one of the features of your Flex application, and by using Snapshots available in LCDS, which uses bitmaps to represent Flash content. This article shows how to treat PDF printing as a feature of your application.

Multi-Tier Application Development with Adobe Flex

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:30:00 EDT

This excerpt describes the process of creating a complete Flex-Java distributed application. Upgrading Flex applications to Java Enterprise Edition applications is done with Flex Data Services. FDS provides transparent access to POJO, EJBs, and JMS and comes with adapters for frameworks like Spring and Hibernate.

Adobe Flex 2: Advanced DataGrid

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:00:00 EST

In any GUI tool, one of the most popular components is the one that shows data in a table format like JTable in Java or Datawindow in PowerBuilder. The Adobe Flex 2 version of such a component is called DataGrid. In any UI framework, the robustness of such a component depends on formatting and validating utilities as well as a whole suite of data input controls: CheckBoxes, ComboBoxes, RadioButtons, all sorts of Inputs, Masks, and so on. Using theatrical terminology, the role of the king is played by his entourage. Practically speaking, touching up the DataGrid is touching up a large portion of the Flex framework.

Closures in ActionScript 3

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:00:00 EST

Closures is one of the cornerstones of dynamic languages. Closures are unavoidable when you use asynchronous operations or need to process an event on the other object. Almost any non-trivial action in Flex communication with the server or getting an input from user is asynchronous. Using closure automatically gives you the reference to the class instance in which you have your function to the external object processing the event.

Adobe Flex 2: Advanced DataGrid

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:45:00 EST

In Part 1 (CFDJ, Vol. 8, issue 10) we introduced the destination-aware grid, formatters, and renderers. In this article we are continuing our discussion about datagrid renderers and...

Working with Large Applications

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 15:00:00 EST

In this excerpt from our book, Rich Internet Applications, we'll cover how to set up large applications intended for Web or, more broadly speaking, distributed deployment. As an example let's consider an enterprise application that consists of hundreds of screens, reports, forms, and dashboards. Accordingly, about a dozen engineers specializing in GUIs, frameworks, data layers, and business domains are working on this application in parallel.

Intelligent Web Applications with AJAX

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:00:00 EDT

Browser-based applications are widely used and we like the fact that we can access them from anywhere. But from the users' perspective, the productivity level of Web applications still doesn't approximate the productivity of desktop programs. The good news is the gap is closing: the accumulated potential of multiple technologies has boosted a whole new breed of HTML-based apps that are as powerful as the desktop ones. Meet AJAX.

End-to-End Rapid Application Development with Data Services & Adobe Flex

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:00:00 EDT

The simplest way to explain Flex Data Services (FDS) is to compare them with Flex Remoting. Simply put, FDS addresses only a subset of operations facilitated via Flex Remoting - result set requests. However, whereas Flex Remoting enables one-way requests, FDS combines one-way requests with the publish/subscribe mechanism so that besides the original result set FDS sends the client live updates produced by other clients of the same destination. And there's one more dimension in which Data Services depart from Flex Remoting - support for hierarchical collections, but we won't be covering that subject in this book.

Extending Adobe Flex with Flash

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:45:00 EDT

While a large Flex application is loaded, the user may experience unpleasant delays, which can be used productively to logon to this application. Besides, it'll give the user perception that your application loads faster.

Flex 2: Large Applications for Impatient Developers

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:00:00 EDT

There are quite a few developers that a) become impatient if the build takes more then 5 seconds and b) concerned that their application will be delivered to the user with similar attention span that could walk away in 10 seconds or less - regardles of the artwork in the progress meter.

SOA and RIA Together: Developing with Adobe Flex and Java

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 09:00:00 EDT

Rich Internet Applications are perfect for consuming enterprise services. As SOA evolves toward reusable components that can be accessed inside and outside of the corporate intranets, they need to provide outside developers with customizable pre-built components that can be easily integrated in composite applications.

Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex 2 and Java

Wed, 10 May 2006 09:45:00 EDT

A typical Java developer knows that when you need to develop a GUI for a Java application, Swing is the tool. Eclipse SWT also has a number of followers, but the majority of people use Java Swing. For the past 10 years, it was a given that Swing development wouldn't be easy; you have to master working with the event-dispatch thread, GridBaglayout, and the like. Recently, the NetBeans team created a nice GUI designer called Matisse, which was also ported to MyEclipse. Prior to Matisse, JBuilder had the best Swing designer, but it was too expensive. Now a good designer comes with NetBeans for free.

Meet AJAX: Intelligent Web Applications with AJAX

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:45:00 EST

Developing Intelligent Web Applications With AJAX (Part 2)

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:00:00 EST

The publicity that AJAX grabbed over the last half a year is based on closing the gap between the Web applications and the desktop applications, combining the 'reach' and 'rich.' At the same time, the gap between the technological level of AJAX and what corporate developers expect in their modern arsenal is really astonishing. After all, AJAX is neither a tool nor a platform. There is no AJAX standards committee or community process in place. While software vendors are crafting proprietary development platforms on top of AJAX - which pretty much means 'from scratch' - early adopters of AJAX are left on their own.

Converting Your Client/Server Applications to the Internet

Wed, 07 Mar 2001 00:00:00 EST

IT projects closely follow the path of technology. .For example, the number of Java/XML/HTML projects is increasing, replacing PowerBuilder or VisualBasic systems developed just a few years ago. And developers are asking themselves the question: Do I have to write the same app from scratch? Again?