Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008 - (Page 40)

Core Technology by Joe Rinehart Building RIAs on J2EE Foundations ColdFusion Joe builds and develops Adobe ColdFusion, Flash, Flex, and Ajax applications for all manner of organizations. He can be contacted at www.firemoss.com. I’ve been hooked on Rich Internet Applications (RIA) since the release of Adobe Flash 5. Unlike traditional HTML-based web applications, RIAs take advantage of client runtimes (like Adobe Flash Player) to deliver engaging user experiences. For instance, to write this article I used an Adobe RIA called “Buzzword” (labs.adobe.com/technologies/buzzword), a full-featured word processor running within my browser that lets me collaborate and work simultaneously—functionality that can’t be found in traditional HTML-based web applications. Adobe Flex RIAs become even more useful to users when they use server-side components for connectivity to databases, media, and other services. I’ve developed the server-side of RIAs using Java, SOAP, .NET, PHP, Rails, and ColdFusion. In the process, ColdFusion has become my application server of choice for RIA service layer development. Why? Because ColdFusion combines straightforward development with features such as Flash Remoting and real-time messaging gateways that simplify communication between the application server and Flex RIAs. To see why ColdFusion is an important addition to a RIA developer’s toolbox, in this article, I design and build a Flex application using ColdFusion 8. This application, named “Task List,” enables collaborative management of a list of tasks using a rich front-end and real-time communications; see Figure 1. The complete source code for the Task List application is available online (see “Resource Center,” page 5). 40 Dr. Dobb’s Journal l www.ddj.com l August 2008 The goals of the Task List application include: • It should be deployable as a Java WAR, allowing simple management and installation. • When users run the application, they should see a simple list of tasks, each clickable to indicate completion. • A text box and “OK” button should let users add new tasks. • Upon adding a new task or completing a task, the update should be pushed in real-time to other users running the application. Building the Flex UI To get started, you need to set up a development environment for writing your Flex and ColdFusion source code. For building Flex applications, you can use Adobe Flex Builder 3, which can be installed as a standalone application or used to add Flex development tools to an existing Eclipse environment. Flex http://www.firemoss.com http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/buzzword http://www.ddj.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008

Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008 Contents Friday Night Fish Fry Alia Vox Developer Diaries Developer’s Notebook A Conversation with Christos Papadimitriou OpenGL and Mobile Devices: Round 2 Ellipse Specification Using Vectors Embed Custom GUIs in WPF Building RIAs on J2EE Foundations Disentangling Concepts in Object-Oriented Systems The Agile Edge Effective Concurrency Swaine’s Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008

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