Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide

Why Use Flash Remoting?

One of the common questions about Flash is whether you can access web services using the Flash client only. Although Flash Player 6 requires Flash Remoting to access web services, Flash Player 7 has built-in SOAP support. However, the basic Flash 2004 authoring tool does not include the SOAP-based components that are standard in Flash Pro. Therefore, you must use Flash Pro (instead of Flash 2004) if you intend to use the built-in SOAP features of the Flash Player 7. As of this writing, it isn’t clear how Macromedia will prevent developers from extending Flash 2004 to support the SOAP enhancements available in Flash Pro. Licensing restrictions and encrypted libraries have been raised as possibilities.

Table 10-1 summarizes the compatibility issues.

Table 10-1. Flash Remoting and SOAP-based web services support

Server platform	Flash Player	Flash Remoting via AMF support	SOAP-based web service support
ColdFusion MX 6.0 or later	Version 6.0.65 or later	Built into ColdFusion Server	Built into ColdFusion Server
JRun 4 or later	Version 6.0.65 or later	Built into JRun	Built into JRun
J2EE	Version 6.0.65 or later	Requires Flash Remoting for J2EE, or OpenAMF	Requires Flash Remoting for J2EE, or OpenAMF
J2EE	Version 7	Requires Flash Remoting for J2EE, or OpenAMF	Built into Flash Player 7 but requires Flash Pro for authoring
.NET	Version 6.0.65 or later	Requires Flash Remoting for .NET	Requires Flash Remoting for .NET
.NET	Version 7	Requires ...