[ICS 499] Java + Flex Hybrid

Premise:
In this blog entry, I'll discuss my experiences of hybridizing Java, Actionscript, and Flex into forming what could possibly be a perfect ingredient for success. Well not absolute success, since I will not be building anything in this entry, but it will leave you with some ideas that could work in your setting. I'll also mention the ease of migrating between Java and Actionscript, and give you some insight into the possible technologies that surround Flex.

Contextual definitions:
Flex - front-end client-server application
Java - back-end object oriented language for building an enterprise server for channeling data
Actionscript - object oriented and script-base language used to construct logic in controlling our Flex client application.

Actionscript & Java:
Actionscript is an object oriented, free form, functional language used to build logic into creating Flash rendered content. The language follows the standards of ECMAScript and recently, in version 3.0 has been enhanced to support E4X for ease of processing XML.
Java is an object oriented language that has been widely accepted for its cross-platform, and strong emphasis in creating server-side technologies.
ActionScript 3 is different from Java when it comes to properties, dynamic behavior, and some very convenient aspects of functional programming. However, the move between Java to Actionscript was not all that difficult and it makes for a beneficial switch once you get the hang of things.
If you need a quick comparison chart between Java & Actionscript, then check out this posting.

Java & Flex:
Java and Flex provides the perfect marriage between two things that just mix well. One, you have a strong server-side back-end and two, a simple, near real-time data rendering front-end with very high refresh rates on large data sets and almost 100% deployable on any browser.
How it all fits together?
Figure 1.
Figure 1: http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/Flex/Flex+and+Java

A successful marriage calls for good communication:
Flex's ability to communicate with a Java EE back-end using HTTP or SOAP-based Web services is highly useful, but you're not limited to those communication approaches.
Adobe provides an open source alternative, called Blaze DS -- a server based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Flex and Adobe's Air application front-ends. BlazeDS lets you use Java Messaging Service JMS for communicating through XML-based transactions and allows you to use object remoting with Java. BlazeDS also adds potential performance benefits because it uses the binary AMF3 format for faster communication than is normally experienced with XML.

Conclusion:
Sorry to leave you with such limited content. I'm just excited now to test out the logic and theory, in order to get one step closer into hybridizing Java with Flex. In my next posting, I'll be concluding my research into a report that summarizes what I've accomplished and my experiences during the course of this study.

Resources:
Java & Actionscript 3 (Part 1)
Java & Actionscript 3 (Part 2)
Java & Flex Integration (Part 1)
Java & Flex Integration (Part 2)