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December 12, 2007
Data synchronization, server push
Data synchronization, server push: Two hard tasks. But today's BlazeDS announcement opens up proven implementations for accomplishing them. AMF specification too. Now there are more ways to customize how a server and a client share and synch data, or how messages pass through a network of machines. New AIR beta and Flex 3 beta too. The Flex/LiveCycle/Blaze Data Services is good strong technology, very useful, and it's great that it has matured enough to open up like this.
Update: Christophe Coenraets has a one-page summary of all the BlazeDS news. And good perspective on the motivations and hopes, via Andy Patrizio.
More updates: When I say "client and server sharing and synching data" above, then that's what "remoting" is: a data object on one machine is reflected by a data object on another machine. The Adobe LiveCycle family have additional Data Synchronization features beyond remoting. And for a good idea of why the AMF format is so important, try playing with James Ward's Census RIA, which lets you compare total messaging speed for various data-transfer methods.
Update to this update: James has also released BlazeBench, an in-browser app which specifically demonstrates the AMF efficiencies which can now be used in more contexts... more than six times as fast as Ajax's JSON or Flex's XML communication mechanisms.
Posted by JohnDowdell at December 12, 2007 09:43 PM
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I woke up to Dana Blankenhorn with a remarkable jump in logic: "Our own Martin Lamonica reports that Adobe has responded to the announcement of Appcelerator by open sourcing BlazeDS, the messaging software for its Flex development tool. Observant readers will recall how yesterday Appcelerator CEO Jeff Haynie told us his new GPL development system is aimed squarely at Flex...."
This is untenable on a number of levels. It would be pretty difficult to do legal review, PR work, and then write up the documentation within an afternoon. And I'm pretty sure most people at Adobe have never heard of "Appcelerator", much less seen that JavaScript library as a major business driver. (I first heard of it yesterday, with Matt Asay's announcement of affiliation.)
It's strange that ZDNet would bother to publish stuff that has such thinking behind it.
Posted by: John Dowdell at December 13, 2007 07:16 AM
Mozilla's Mike Shaver had a provocative blog post which got linked around a bit. I left a comment there, but his Wordpress installation doesn't provide feedback on whether unpublished comments have entered a moderation queue or just disappeared, so I'll copy the comment here:
I'm sorry you're not happy, Mike, but I think that goes with the nature of trying to classify everything as either "open" or "proprietary", black-and-white categories.
James can speak for himself, but I gave up on such manicheanism years ago:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/jd_forum/jd026.html
Proven, tested ways to efficiently share data across client and server, and to initiate messages from servers to clients, are now available for anyone to use, at no cost, and with the ability to modify the source code. There's not much not to like there, oui?
jd/adobe
By the way, I quite agreed with Mike Chambers' post awhile back, on the needless inaccuracy of rebranding XULRunner by saying "Adobe AIR is trying to build a proprietary platform to replace the web."
Posted by: John Dowdell at December 13, 2007 08:20 AM