What Is Remoting Used For?
I’ve talked about the benefits of Flash Remoting, but what can you build with it? Here are some of the possible uses of Flash Remoting:
Any application that requires a connection to a database, filesystem, or other server-side technology.
Online stores that feature catalogs and shopping cart systems. The entire user experience can be consolidated into one central interface with no page reloads.
Sound and video clip libraries. Using the streaming audio and video capabilities of Flash in conjunction with Flash Communication Server (FlashCom), along with the server-side capabilities of an application server, you can offer searchable, browsable clip libraries.
Banner ads with built-in shopping carts, click-through tracking, and full-site search capabilities.
New controls that can be used in place of HTML elements that leverage the server-side capabilities of ColdFusion, ASP.NET, or J2EE.
Extensions to Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, or other applications that provide instant access to a remote support site or reference material.
An online auction interface that stores your own watched items locally and polls the remote web service for changes in bids.
Front-ends to databases for administrators. You can give your client an administrative interface so that she can access tables and raw data without giving her the keys to the store, so to speak.
The architecture of Flash Remoting makes it easy for Flash programmers to develop Flash movies, knowing only the remote method names and functionality. They can access server-side functionality using familiar ActionScript syntax. Likewise, server-side coders can build functionality on the server without knowing how the Flash movie is going to interact with it. They merely have to provide an interface to the method and return a result. That result can be virtually anything, such as a recordset, string, number, array, or structure. Complex applications can be broken down into component parts, with designers building the Flash interfaces, ActionScript programmers coding the client-side Flash Remoting code, and server-side programmers (ColdFusion, PHP, Perl, Java, or ASP.NET) supplying the server-side functionality.
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