AdvancED Flex 4

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Summary

We began our examination of Flex and Java integration with a discussion of loose coupling using HTTP,

and finished with a look at different styles of web service–based integration. We mentioned that AMF-

based integration provides for tighter integration than anything seen so far.

Now let’s step back a bit and view the Flex and Java integration options by first illustrating it at a very high

level and then progressively drilling down to a detailed perspective.

Using a 30,000-foot analogy, we can view the integration as pull-only vs. pull-and-push, as summarized in

Figure 7-10.

Figure 7-10. A 30,000-foot view of integration between Flex and Java

Drilling down a bit further, and reaching 10,000 feet, the situation seems divided between the ideas and

components that facilitate RPCs and those that enable messaging Figure 7-11 shows the 10,000-foot

view.

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Figure 7-11. 10,000-foot view of integration between Flex and Java

One more level down gets us into the realm of individual components and their roles. Figure 7-12 is a self-

explanatory representation of this, which we’ll call the 1,000-foot view. The diagram lists a few data

services, namely LCDS, BlazeDS, GraniteDS, OpenAMF, and WebORB. Chapter 8 provides more

information on these data services.

This chapter has shown a fair bit of these perspectives in practice, and the following chapter builds on

them. What you learn from these should be applicable to languages beyond Java and in situations more

complex than the ones illustrated. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is transforming legacy applications

and driving new applications to create a loosely coupled, scalable, server-side infrastructure. Flex-rich

interfaces can be integrated with such an SOA infrastructure using the methodologies discussed in this

chapter.

Finally, if we zoom in to a very close range, like 100 feet, the details of the wiring and the interaction model

comes to light. Figure 7-13 shows this level.

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Figure 7-12. 1,000-foot view of integration between Flex and Java

Figure 7-13. 100-foot view of integration between Flex and Java

In the next chapter, we’ll focus down even further and move on to the subject of tighter integration between

Flex and Java over AMF-based data services and media servers.