Note: This article was created based on Flex 2. Minor changes in the description and code may be necessary before it can be applied to Flex 3.

Portal Overview

Web portal servers are a popular medium for aggregating consistent, integrated and easy-to-use applications to communities of users such as employees and partners accessing a corporate intranet or users of public sites such as Yahoo and Google. Portal servers are a component of an enterprise’s web infrastructure and securely aggregate multiple applications, known as portlets, via the Java Standardization Request (JSR) 168 interface or remotely via Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP).

Flash content and applications have become the de facto standard for rich web experiences. Due to its ubiquity the Flash Player is a consistent, reliable platform for web based applications. Adobe Flex™ enables developers to easily build Flash based applications using the free Flex 2 SDK or the Eclipse based Flex Builder 2 IDE. Flex is based on a modern object oriented XML and ECMAScript programming model, allowing developers familiar with Java and other object oriented languages to quickly learn and master building best of breed web applications.

Download Flex Builder 2 now:

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Adobe is enabling enterprise developers to leverage their best of breed Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology, Flex, in enterprise portal infrastructures. These innovative technologies will allow Portlet Administrators to deploy Flex applications inside portal servers such as Oracle® Application Server Portal, giving them full control over the customization and personalization of new RIA Portlets. Adobe will continue to work together with Oracle and other industry leaders to develop the JSR 286 portal specification and enable enhanced Rich Client Portlet interactions.

While portals have been very successful tools for organizations developing applications to interact with large numbers of users, traditional portlet technologies have limitations that IT departments must overcome to deliver the rich, interactive experiences that users are demanding while ensuring security and controlling development time and costs. Since traditional portlets are rendered in HTML, they inherit limitations such as the need for expensive page refreshes, lack of client-side data manipulation, statelessness, and limited user interface components.

Using Flex for compelling portal development

Adobe Flex applications provide users with rich interactivity and responsiveness similar to desktop programs. By leveraging improvements in data loading, visualization, and execution, they deliver better performance to users and more efficient use of computing resources. Flex applications can take advantage of data streaming and rich media integration to provide compelling functionality that would be difficult and expensive to develop using traditional portlet technologies. Since Flex applications are accessed via standard web browsers, they can take advantage of the web deployment model’s traditional benefits such as single-sign-on and secure data transfer. Through robust support for platforms such as the Oracle® Application Server Portal and open standards such as JSR 168 and WSRP, Flex applications are portable, integrated and scalable to meet line-of-business needs in enterprise environments. The Flex programming model, based on XML and ECMAScript, allows developers to build reusable rich interactive components.

Web 2.0 initiatives present IT departments with new challenges to enable lightweight business models by continuously developing and improving web applications. To meet these business demands, they must choose tools and platforms that maximize their innovative capacity. The easy-to-use Eclipse based Flex Builder IDE, enables rapid development and deployment of Flex applications built on familiar, industry-standard languages and interfaces.

Rich Internet applications and portals

While many organizations have developed portals to meet needs for application aggregation, personalized user interaction, and single sign-on, users have remained frustrated by cumbersome experiences. Rich Internet applications (RIAs) offer organizations an opportunity to greatly improve user satisfaction by adding richer and more user-friendly portlets to their portals. These RIAs improve user satisfaction by providing desktop-like features and performance, while also improving client/server performance and portal responsiveness. Since more sophisticated logic and data representation are available on the client, page refreshes and portlet renders are not required with each user interaction.

Businesses recognize numerous benefits of providing Flex-based RIA portlets to customers, partners and employees:

• Flex applications feel and act more like desktop applications than traditional HTML-based applications
• Interactions and updates do not cause entire pages to refresh, improving user experience, CPU and network performance
• A wide range of Flex user interface components and expressive features such as transitions and animations help users understand data and application flow
• Support for real-time data streams provide instant updates without manual user intervention or expensive page reloads.
• Support for rich media in Flex portlets allows more lively and compelling user experiences and enables a wide range of applications such as eLearning and entertainment.

Since Flex applications run within web pages, they can easily communicate with other page elements via JavaScript, to perform client-side inter-portlet communication. They can also elect to perform server-side communications by making asynchronous requests to a server endpoint with a minimal amount of logic that passes the message to the portal’s inter-portlet communication SPI. Support for inter-portlet communications allows Flex to be part of a seamlessly integrated, highly responsive portal experience while reducing network and server loads.

For example, a financial services institution can use Flex to build a client services portal consisting of several applications such as a market fund selector, a real time market data viewer, a portfolio monitor and a chat portlet. Data is pushed from an Oracle Application Server Portal to the client using the realtime messaging capabilities of Flex Data Services, without forcing the entire page to refresh. Client-side logic and inter-portlet communication enable rich interactions between different portlets, for instance, the fund selector and the market data viewer. Users can select, sort and filters data without the latency or processing cost of repeated server requests and page refreshes.

The future of rich Internet applications and portals Web portals serving RIA portlets will play an important role as organizations upgrade their Internet and Intranet sites to deliver next-generation, Web 2.0 experiences.

Adobe is an active participant in standards organizations, working groups and associations that help ensure businesses and government agencies can develop innovative, interoperable and portable RIAs and portals. Adobe plays a leadership role in the following portal-related standardization initiatives:

• The OpenAjax Alliance
  www.openajax.org/
• JSR 286: Portlet Specification 2.0
  www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=286
• JSR 301: Portlet Bridge Specification for JavaServer TM Faces
  www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=301
• Standard ECMA-262: ECMAScript Language Specification
  www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm

Adobe will continue to ensure that Flex applications integrate seamlessly with current and upcoming platforms such as Oracle Fusion Middleware. Adobe & Oracle are working together to enhance the Portal Specification (JSR 286) to enable Rich Client Portlet interaction.

Flex is a complete and powerful cross-platform application development solution for delivering rich Internet applications throughout the enterprise and across the web. By adopting Flex, IT departments can deliver on the promise of rich, Web 2.0-oriented portal experiences users expect while controlling costs, maximizing server and network resources, reducing development times and improving their ability to innovate solutions that meet business needs.

For more information

Click on the following links for more information on Flex solutions for enterprise portals:

• Visit the Flex product page at:
  www.adobe.com/products/flex/
• Download and try Flex from:
  www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=flex
• Visit the Flex developer community at:
  www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/

Bookmark this page for additional information on how Flex can help IT departments meet the challenges of addressing organizational and user expectations for rich Internet applications.

 

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