Wiley Flex 3 Bible 978-0-470-28764-4 Manuale Utente

F

lex 3 is the most recent version of a platform for developing and
deploying software applications that run on top of the Adobe Flash
Player. While such tools have existed for many years, the most recent

toolkit from Adobe Systems allows programmers with object-oriented back-
grounds to become productive very quickly using the skills they already have
learned in other programming languages and platforms.

Since the release of Flex 2, the Flex development environment has encour-
aged a development workflow similar to that used in other desktop develop-
ment environments such as Visual Studio, Delphi, and JBuilder. The
developer writes source code and compiles an application locally and then
uploads the finished application to a Web server for access by the user. That
isn’t how Flex started, however.

Flex was originally released by Macromedia as a server-based application
deployment and hosting platform. In the early versions of the Flex product
line, an MXML/ActionScript compiler was included in a Java-based Web
application hosted on a Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) server. Application
source code was stored on the server. When a user made a request to the
server, the application was compiled “on request” and delivered to the user’s
browser, and hosted by the Flash Player.

This server-based compilation and application deployment model is still
available in the most recent version of the server software now known as
LiveCycle Data Services ES. But the version of the compiler that’s delivered in
LiveCycle Data Services isn’t necessarily the same as the one that’s available
in both the Flex 3 Software Developers Kit (SDK) and Flex Builder 3. And
most developers find it simpler to use the primary “local compilation” devel-
opment model.

About Flex 3

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