Flex Article

Flex 2 beta 3: What's changed since beta 2

The Adobe® Flex™ 2 product team is excited to announce the public availability of Flex 2 beta 3. In the weeks since the Flex 2 beta 2 release, engineers have been busily fixing hundreds of bugs. They even had time to deliver several important new product features. For a complete list of changes and new features, see the release notes and the summary of changes from beta 2 to beta 3.

Some notable highlights include the following:

• The Flex framework underwent a significant API scrub for beta 3 to ensure consistency and usability. Be sure to check the documentation for information that will help you migrate your applications from beta 2.
• Flex Builder™ includes performance and memory utilization improvements as well as enhanced debugging features. Flex Builder also includes a new Welcome page and improved language reference/help search.
• Flex Data Services includes several important enhancements, including support for dynamic destinations, improved Java–ActionScript serialization support, support for factory usage to enable easier integration with component frameworks such as Spring and EJB, and data services performance improvements.
• The Flex framework source code is now included in the Flex SDK and Flex Builder.
• Flex Data Services (formerly Flex Enterprise Services) provides the same RPC services available in Flex 1.5 (RemoteObject, proxied web services, and HTTP) with new data messaging capabilities to enable developers to build new classes of rich Internet applications.

Adobe Flex 2 is the second generation of the award-winning Flex rich Internet application (RIA) environment. The Flex 2 product line contains several important pieces for building professional-grade RIAs, including the following:

• Adobe Flex 2 Software Development Kit (SDK): The Flex SDK includes the Flex 2 compiler and Flex 2 framework. The SDK is available for free for building and deploying RIAs with Flex.
• Adobe Flex Charting: Flex's Charting components provide advanced charting capabilities including multi-axis charts and sophisticated financial charts, along with line, bar, and pie charts.
• Adobe Flex Builder 2: Flex Builder 2 is the Flex 2 IDE based on Eclipse that provides an enhanced development environment for building Flex 2 applications. Flex Builder delivers developer productivity capabilities like code hinting, code debugging, and a graphical design view.
• Adobe Flex Data Services 2: Flex Data Services (formerly Flex Enterprise Services 2) provides the same RPC services available in Flex 1.5 (RemoteObject, proxied web services, and HTTP) with new data messaging capabilities to enable pub/sub messaging, collaboration, and data push along with data management services to solve the unique performance, data synchronization, and data paging problems that data-rich RIAs present.

If you are new to Flex 2, I recommend that you read Flex 2: Enabling the next generation of rich Internet applications, by Vice President of Engineering David Wadhwani. Also, see the tutorials in Adobe Labs and videos about Flex 2.

ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity beta 3 update available

The ColdFusion team has been busy building important integration features in the ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity beta 3 update that will allow ColdFusion developers to leverage the power of Flex Data Services. The ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity beta 3 update provides several important Flex 2 capabilities that allow ColdFusion developers to build sophisticated Flex 2 applications that leverage ColdFusion.

Flash Remoting update

The ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity beta 3 update provides a new version of Flash Remoting that supports ActionScript 3.0 and AMF3. Previous Flash Remoting gateways supported AMF0, ActionScript 1.0, and ActionScript 2.0. This means that you can build a Flex 2 application with Flex Builder or the Flex SDK that makes RemoteObject calls to ColdFusion components (CFCs) that interact with back-end data systems.

CF-Flex event gateway

The ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity beta 3 update provides support for developers to use the ColdFusion event gateway with the Flex Data Services messaging architecture. The ColdFusion-Flex event gateway supports a Flex application specifying a ColdFusion event gateway as a messaging destination (just as it would a JMS topic or queue). Similarly, a ColdFusion application can use an event gateway to send events to a Flex application.

CF Adapter for Flex Data Services

Traditional web applications use HTML user interfaces as a data capture and display device. However, a rich Internet application built using the powerful runtime and programming model of Flex 2 allows for a full application running on the client side. As multiple clients are using the same data, the data management capabilities of Flex Data Services provide support for complex cross-tier data synchronization, conflict management, and data paging. These features are critical for building reliable, scalable, enterprise-class rich Internet applications. The ColdFusion Adapter allows Flex developers to use CFCs with Flex Data Management Services.

ColdFusion Wizards for Flex Builder

The ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity beta 3 update will also include Flex Builder wizards that make common Flex development tasks easier. ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity includes the following wizards:

• ActionScript to CFC wizard: Create a ColdFusion component (CFC) based on an ActionScript class file
• CFC to ActionScript wizard: Create an ActionScript file based on a CFC
• Value Object RDS CRUD wizard: Dynamically create a CFC based on a table that is registered in the ColdFusion Administrator on a ColdFusion server

Read more about the wizards:

• Download the ColdFusion Extensions for Flex Builder 2
• Release notes and installation instructions
• Damon Cooper's blog entry: "CF/FlexBuilder 2 App Gen Wizard Available"

Where to go from here

We are very excited and proud of the Flex 2 product line and would like you to get involved by downloading and installing the Flex 2 beta 3. You can find more information about the Flex 2 beta and download the installer from Adobe Labs.

ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity beta 3 provides a Flex messaging adapter that allows Flex applications to publish and subscribe to messages delivered by the ColdFusion event gateway. ColdFusion/Flex Connectivity beta 3 also provides a CFC adapter for data management services. These features, along with the Flex Builder extensions for ColdFusion, will allow ColdFusion developers to build sophisticated RIAs with Flex and ColdFusion.

For more information on Flex 2 beta 3, see the following resources:

• Download Flex 2 beta 3
• Flex 2: Enabling the next generation of rich Internet applications
• Flex 2 beta 3 release notes
• Summary of changes from beta 2 to beta 3

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