Let's say you have a business object which has rich getters (where the properties of the bean do not correspond directly to the columns in the database table). What is the best way of architecting your model to return the calculated values for both your Flex and HTML applications? Here are some thoughts . . . (Thanks to Jeff Tapper for his excellent intro to Flex which got me thinking about this topic)

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Look like there's gonna be an announcement tonight . . .

I'm a complete Flex/Apollo newbie, but from what I understand it is possible to implement FTP commands in AS3 using the Sockets API (which I believe is available in Flex - not just Apollo). Was wondering if anyone has seen a library that does this yet?

Hoping to create an Apollo component application for local file browsing and uploading using RFC959 FTP (including the "REST"art command for resuming uploads).

Let me know if you see anything and apologies if this is something that is out there - couldn't find anything via Google . . .

I want to be able to use a fairly generic flex app for listing, adding, editing and deleting (say) Users. So, if I want to add a new user with first name, last name date of birth and Resume (a pdf) and photo (a jpg), what do you flex guys typically send back to the server? It almost seems to me like it'd be as easy for you just to do an HTTP POST of form data which already supports file uploads as part of a greater entity.

I guess my questions would be whether doing an http form post (and attaching a file to it) is easy in Flex. Second question would be whether this is the most common approach, and third would be for this kind of use case, how else would you solve the communication between flex and the server? Can you drop a BLOB into an XML packet or even a formal SOAP call? Are there standard approaches for doing this in Flex?

Just to clarify, this use case is distinct from a Flex file upload tool optimized for uploading multiple files that are independent of other data. I'm looking to have a way of uploading a User with first name, last name, DoB, resume and photo and am just wondering the default approach and perhaps any other alternatives . . .

Any input wildly appreciated!

A very interesting post by Steven Webster on the next iteration of FDS. Looks like this is getting rolled together with LiveCycle to create a very interesting set of tools for producing and mediating data for rich client front ends (whether Flex, AJAX or Apollo) including smart queuing support for occasionally connected (Apollo) apps and a SQL adapter for straightforward access to SQL data without having to do your own code gen.

Big question for me is whether there will continue to be an express version as the commercial license is a little rich for my clients blood, but huge potential here. Anyone played with this yet?

Was just chatting with Simeon and realized that I hadn't blogged about this link. It is short but interesting, arguing that one of the take aways from Flex is about the power of code gen and DSLs for UI.

Thoughts?

I am really looking forward to 360 flex. I'll be flying to SFO on Sunday morning and back on the red eye to New York Thursday morning. I'm pretty new to Flex, but I have the Total Training video that I hope to crank up Sunday night so I have some idea what everyone is talking about :->

It'll be great to see the many Flex people I've come across through MXNA as well as the ColdFusion friends who'll be there. If you're attending, make sure to drop me an email (or just comment below) and I'll email you with my cell number so we can try to put faces to blogs!

Also hoping to upgrade LightWire to a nice little config bean setup I've had in the back of my mind for a while. The nice thing about a small codebase is that the upgrade shouldn't take much more than a couple of uninterrupted hours on the 'plane. Here's hoping!