Development Trends

Read more about Air for Android – download free issue here

I ran into these two articles – describing how to integrate Adobe Flex and the Zend Framework using AMF.

The first article describes how to build a Flex client that uses AMF services based on Zend Framework – click here.

The second article describes how you build the server side services in the Zend Framework – click here.

I ran into this cool SWC at www.AlivePDF.org – so have a detailed look here if you want to output PDF’s from eg. Adobe AIR.

www.AlivePDF.org: “AlivePDF is an open-source ActionScript 3 (Flash, Flex, AIR) PDF generation library ported from the FPDF PHP project.
It allows you to generate PDF’s 100% client-side.”

The new Apple IPad is out – but why isn’t Flash supported ?

Click here to see the engadget-review

Try some of the new features below in Adobe AIR 2 – BETA

If you have  experience with BlazeDS, WebORB or AMFPHP you might also want to have a look at the Zend Framework – Adobe and Zend have announced a collaboration for creating Flex applications powered by the Zend Framework – interested..? then just click here to get started.

Or have a look at the Programmer’s reference guide.

I just ran into this amazing site – containing a lot of good Adobe Flex Video code-samples/tutorials … Goto and Learn… click here to visit the site.

Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com – Developer Preview (codename Stratus) is a new development tool for building cloud-based, rich Internet applications (RIAs) that can be deployed in the browser or on the desktop leveraging Adobe AIR.

Read more at Adobe Developer Connection

In the good old days when the SAP Portal was brand new and everybody discussed what kind of content would/could be available in there in the near future, there was always one example which was demo’ed again and again: The Stock ticker or The list of preferred stocks and related updates. Although we knew that most customers did not have this “need”, the demo continued to survive – and it took a while  before there was a real proposal on serious content.

Will the same thing happen to SAP Flash Island?

…. will Google Maps examples and colour full Piechart examples be the “Stock ticker” for SAP Flash  Island?

Maybe… or maybe not… maybe there are a lot of inspiration to find in the Adobe Flex community, because there are already a lot of exising components and applications available – and a lot of different API’s are already supported by Adobe Flex. The inspiration might lead you to a ‘non-stock-ticker’ for SAP Flash Island.

If you visit Adobe.com/devnet you might find some inspiration to a new mashup – which could be a SAP Flash Island candidate  – just to mention a few:

• Component: Adobe Cocomo – read more
• API:  Google Analytics – read more
• API: Facebook – read more

For quite some time now SAP and Adobe has presented different methods and initiatives you could use if you would like to integrate Adobe Flex and SAP Netweaver.  I will try to summarize four different scenarios you could consider.

Using SAP Flash Island scenario

If you are using Netweaver 7.0 EhP1 or 7.1 then you can use the SAP Flash Island framework to integrate Adobe Flex with SAP (read more about SAP Flash Island here). The framework will create a ‘bridge’ between a SAP WebDynpro application and Flex. In order to ‘connect to this bridge/framework’ – you need to use a library from SAP in your Flex project – I have created a template project you can use for this purpose click here. Flash Islands are best suited for smaller applications/components – especially for areas where you are missing UI functionality in the WebDynpro, e.g. could be advanced graphics, interactive maps, graphs and statistics. Authentication, User and session management will be handled by the WebDynpro application.

Using SAP BSP and an embedded Adobe Flex component

So what do you do if your application is SAP is not based on WebDynpro – then you will be missing the framework and bridge which will make it easy to communicate with an Adobe Flex application – or ? Well in SAP BSP you can use <object><embed> … </embed><object> to include an SWF application in the application – read more here.  But the data binding and event handling you will have to handle yourself in the BSP and in the Flex application. This kind of integration is also meant for smaller applications/components – especially for areas where you are missing UI functionality in SAP BSP, e.g. again could be advanced graphics, interactive maps, graphs and statistics. Authentication, User and session management will be handled by the SAP BSP application.

Using an HTTP REST backend application in SAP BSP – and an Adobe Flex RIA as Frontend

So… what do we do if we want to build a larger application in Adobe Flex (RIA) which should be integrated with SAP Netweaver? Well.. One possibility would be to build a set of backend services in SAP BSP using the HTTP REST approach/architecture (read more here). In SAP you will then be building normal BSP’s which will receive the input parameters in a HTTP request – and send the reply to the calling application as XML. These services can be called from Adobe Flex using the HTTP-request object. The work could be divided in two parts: the work regarding the design and implementation in SAP and the work with the design and implementation of the RIA using Adobe Flex. In between you need to describe and design the implementation of the interface. User and session management could be handled by the SAP BSP application if it’s running as a state full application. Regarding Authentication you need to consider how you would implement this in the application.

Using WebService enabled SAP BAPI’s as backend application – and an Adobe RIA as Frontend

In the last method you could consider using Webservice enabled BAPI’s instead of having to write BSP’s to communicate with the frontend. From Netweaver 6.40 and onwards all BAPI’s in SAP could be webservice enabled – and from 7.0 the functionality has been improved. And it’s possible to call these webservice enabled BAPI’s directly from Adobe Flex. You can use standard BAPI’s and/or make custom development for your own specific BAPI requests. User and session management should be handled by the Adobe Flex application. Regarding Authentication you need to consider how you would implement this in the application.