FDS and polling are not your only options. Write a back-end server that answers socket connections above 1024, responds to the permissions query (or alternately, write your flash to first request a crossdomain.xml file, so that it never asks the socket for permissions) and then talks XML with null byte terminators.
Then XMLSocket gives you your push-supporting interface. We've had the backend server since before we started using Flex, and we needed it to support a variety of languages (C#, C, C++, PHP, and AS3 so far all talk to it). It works quite well. Daniel On 5/21/07, Mark Ingram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I should also state that the reason I want to use ASP.NET Web Services or .NET Components is because I want to access a database (the result of all collaborative work will be stored there). Thanks, Mark ------------------------------ *From:* flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *Mark Ingram *Sent:* 21 May 2007 16:24 *To:* flexcoders@yahoogroups.com *Subject:* RE: [flexcoders] Re: Am I using the right technology? Hi Barrie, thanks for the response. In terms of collaboration, anything will do. I tried a great example using Flash Media Server 2, which was a chat client. Each client was informed when a new client joined or typed a message. That's exactly what I was looking for, as we created one the other week that was based around polling. It worked, but it wasn't elegant. The price tag on FMS seems steep too (not compared to FDS!). $4000 for 150 concurrent users? Or more users if you throttle their bandwidth. The ideal solution for me would allow data-push and be able to communicate with ASP.NET. I have looked at WebOrb, but again, $10,000 per CPU is a little high. So here are the options as I see it: Flex Data Services (LiveCycle Data Services): $20,000 per CPU Midnight Coders Data Services: $10,000 per CPU Flash Media Server: $4,000 per 150 users (unthrottled) Polling WebServices: Free (plenty of development required though) Another down side of FMS is that you can't develop in Flex Builder? And from what I've seen it doesn't use ActionScript 3? I feel awfully confused about all these similar products! Based on my requirements, what would be the best option (see above)? Thanks, ------------------------------ *From:* flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *barry.beattie *Sent:* 21 May 2007 15:22 *To:* flexcoders@yahoogroups.com *Subject:* [flexcoders] Re: Am I using the right technology? Hang on a sec... in giving Mark an answer, he's been landed with more jargon. Mark, I'm nowhere near the expert that Tom or others here are on this subject ... ... and there are some good blog posts around (and the Adobe site itself) with decent detail on all of it ... but... I work at a university and they're forever going on about collaboration, whether it's research partners, academics or student teams. I'm hunting for a project to put this into practice... (in a nutshell) both remoting and webservices follow the typical request/response. so any sync'ing of data needs polling so the clients can find out if server has new changes. but FlexDataServices (or LiveCycle DS now-a-days) has a handle back to each client from the server so it can push events/notifications telling the clients that the server's data has changed. this gives a pretty powerful hub-type configuration where one client commits updates on the server which can be sent back to all the other clients in a heartbeat. however, this is NOT peer-to-peer collaboration. the server is definitely in the middle of it all, receiving and broadcasting to subscribers. Which is OK if the data/documents/whatever is to be persisted and managed on the server. Keep in mind, that sort of technology isn't cheap - not compared to webservices... I'm no expert on all of this and I've got my own issues trying to work out how flex can do true peer-to-peer collaboration (no FDS). I'm also unsure what the upgrade path will be with our FlashMediaServers (FMS) while I wait for ColdFusion8 (and it's reported LCDS and FMS integration). but I do hope that's helped somewhat. Others can chime in with much better replies. this is just something quick to help lift the fog. what sort of collaboration do you need to do?
