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AdvancED Flex 3

Shashank Tiwari et al.

 

Created:
11 May 2009
User Level:
Advanced
Products:
Flex

AdvancED Flex 3 excerpt: Sculpting interactive business intelligence interfaces

The power of rich interactive applications is often well realized in solutions that present data in interactive and engaging ways and allow users to manipulate the data to cull out deductions and inferences for better decision making. Business intelligence (BI) is usually defined as the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. The intent of such an exercise is to facilitate better decision making so that the business performs better and stays ahead of competition.

When I talk about BI interfaces in this chapter, I focus on the analysis and presentation aspects of the definition. So, the agenda here is to illustrate the tools and techniques available in Flex 3 to create highly interactive interfaces to present business information, so that you and your users can benefit from such creations that help analyze information effectively for superior decision making.

Visually appealing representations of data are often easy for human beings to understand. Therefore, charts are the starting point in this Flex and BI discussion.

Column chart plot of the top four countries by GDP (PPP)

Figure. Column chart plot of the top four countries by GDP (PPP)

This chapter covers the following topics:

  • Charts and graphs
  • AdvancedDataGrid
  • OLAP data grid

Note: Excerpted from AdvancED Flex 3 by Elad Elrom, Jack Herrington, Joshua Mostafa, Shashank Tiwari. Copyright © 2008. Used with permission of friends of ED. For more information about this book and how to buy it, visit friends of Ed.

Prerequisites

Knowledge of Flex.

Requirements

In order to make the most of this article, you need the following software and files:

Flex Builder 3

Read the complete chapter

About the author

Shashank Tiwari is a Managing Partner & CTO at Treasury of Ideas, a technology driven innovation and value optimization company. As an experienced software developer and architect, he is adept in a multitude of technologies. He is an internationally recognized speaker, author and mentor. As an expert group member on a number of JCP (Java Community Process) specifications he has been actively participating in shaping the future of Java. He is also an Adobe Flex Champion and a common voice in the RIA community. Currently, he passionately builds rich high performance scalable applications and advises many on RIA and SOA adoption. His clients range from large financial service corporations to brilliant startups, whom he helps translate cutting edge ideas into reality. He is also actively engaged in training and mentoring developers and architects in leading edge technology. He is the author of a number of books and articles, including Advanced Flex 3 (Apress, 2008) and Professional BlazeDS (Wiley, 2009). He lives with his wife and two sons in New York. More information about him can be accessed at his website (http://www.shanky.org).