Professional BlazeDS: Creating Rich Internet Applications with Flex® and Java®

1.6. Summary

This is the first chapter of a book that talks about integrating Flex and Java to create an RIA. Because it is the first chapter, it did not address the central theme but worked on the essential prerequisites for the rest of the book. This chapter was an introduction to the Adobe Flex technology itself.

The fundamentals of Flex were explored. The exploration started with controls and containers, which are the core of the framework. The treatment was cursory and mostly restricted to definitions and elementary examples.

After the controls and containers, the topic of external data consumption was explained briefly. The different levels of communication and conversation between Flex and the server side was illustrated, ranging from loose HTTP-based requests to remoting. Again, the treatment was an overview.

The last parts of the chapter brought out the features in the framework that facilitate the creation of engaging and rich interfaces and that allow for extension of the framework.

That was it as far as this chapter goes. Remember, though that this is just the beginning, and the main topic is about to begin!