BlazeDS + Flex, From a Java Newbie’s Perspective (Background)

I’ve recently committed to speaking at the Seattle Flex User Group meeting in Feb, and in preparation, I will be posting my ‘notes’ here. Hopefully I will be able to take you from knowing no java to being able to have a simple yet useful application working in BlazeDS. This application will utilize Java, Hibernate and MySQL to power the Resource Manager graph from ILOG Elixir. For Java newbies like myself, I can recommend the following reading materials (I recommend signing up for OReilly Safari):

• Getting Started with Hibernate 3 (OReilly Shortcut)
• Agile Java Development with Spring, Hibernate and Eclipse
• Head First Java

**update** I’ve moved everything to a static page, view it here: BlazeDS + Flex
With the release of BlazeDS and WebORB Java going free, creating XML files from PHP doesn’t seem to be such a good idea anymore. After spending a year with Flex, switching back to PHP with it’s dynamic typing feels like I’ve switched to using crayons. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still use PHP for other purposes, but when I have all of the data strongly typed on the client and in the database, I don’t like the backend to not care.

A little bit of background, I haven’t compiled a Java program in 4 years, and that was for CompSci 312 when I was getting my undergrad. I’m coming to this brand new, and I may be making some mistakes… Hopefully I make them, someone corrects me, and I can pass this knowledge back to everyone else looking to take advantage of BlazeDS.

Also of some interest is that this is currently the third iteration of my little project. First I used WebORB PHP and was generally happy with the result. I wasn’t so happy with the whole PHP part, so I decided to see if I could learn Java. I ported my app over to Java with the help of the WebORB documentation, and I’d strongly recommend any java newbies to experiment with WebORB, as there is no newbie documentation for BlazeDS. After I got my application working in WebORB, I decided I wanted some of the Messaging/Polling features offered in BlazeDS, and after reading this post, I decided to try porting over to BlazeDS. WebORB does a lot of hand-holding, and BlazeDS requires more explicit configuration, but after working this out, I’ve got my application running on three backends!