Professional Adobe® Flex® 3

Chapter 53. Introduction to LCDS

LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS) is a client- and server-side technology for integrating Flex and AIR client applications with different kinds of data resources and simplifying otherwise complex data management problems, such as data synchronization, conflict resolution, and paging of large data sets.

Overview of LCDS

LCDS is an enterprise framework that makes it easy to develop any manner of data-intensive applications — from a Flex trading application that consumes live price feeds at a rate of many updates-per-second, to a collaborative experience built in AIR that allows multiple users to edit and interact with the same document concurrently. To achieve all this, LCDS provides an assortment of Flex and Java components that encapsulate the complexities of remote data access and management, while integrating with existing backend systems.

Figure 53-1 shows a screen grab from the AMGEN Tour of California application built by Adobe in four weeks, using LCDS and Flash Media Server. The application featured live GPS tracking of riders, route maps, geo-positioned photos, video clips, and live chat. It demonstrates the kind of application that can be created with LCDS in a relatively short amount of time and how the technology can be integrated with other parts of the Flex ecosystem.

Figure 53-1. Figure 53-1

Part IX, "Data Services," devotes six chapters to LCDS ...