Macromedia® Flash™ MX 2004 for Rich Internet Applications

Chapter 4. Working with Complex Data

Although computers are great at gathering, manipulating, and calculating raw data, humans prefer their data presented in an orderly fashion. The same way all the world events can be organized into a newspaper by editors, rich Internet applications (RIAs) should present just the important data. If you’re buying a house in a new town, for instance, you don’t need to know all the prices ever paid for houses, but you may want to know the median price paid in the past 90 days. Unfortunately, as the programmer, you have to sift through all the data gathered to extract just the important parts—and present it in a visually ...