Sunday, June 24, 2012

More about Adobe Flash Platform & SAP Integration


Rich Islands for Adobe Flash Platform - Flex 3.0 SDK support for SAP NetWeaver was introduced on the Java stack as of 711 SP2 and on the ABAP stack as of 701 SP3 and 711 SP2.  Because of incompatibilies with Flex SDK versions it is required that Flex SDK 3.0 is used to compile a Flash Island.  In particular Flex 3.4 introduces an incompatible change to an interface.  

Flex SDK 3.4 is therefore not supported.  Please see the Adobe bug here: 
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-23171


How to create a colorpicker in SAP WebDynpro ABAP using Adobe Flex - A step-by-step guide on how to create an Adobe Flex component in Flash Builder and adding the SAP WD Libraries and integrating it with SAP WebDynpro ABAP UI

References:

A Book about Developing SAP Applications with Adobe Flex:
http://www.sappress.com/product.cfm?account=&product=H1951

Demonstration Video of Adobe Flex application on top of SAP:
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/flexsappoc/

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Amehtyst - An alternate IDE for Flex Developers

SapphireSteel Software’s Amethyst Professional is a new IDE for Apache (aka Adobe)  Flex which provides developers  using Microsoft Visual Studio a powerful environment for developing on the Flash Platform. It supplied for Amethyst is supplied in separate versions for both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. 


Amethyst IDE includes a visual drag-and-drop designer for the following 

  • Flex 3, 
  • Flex 4 
  • Flex 4.5 and 
  • Adobe AIR. 
The Amethyst IDE contains the following components 
  1. fully integrated visual designer 
  2. ActionScript and MXML code editors with support for the following features: 
    • code refactoring , 
    • IntelliSense, 
    • auto-expanding snippets (code templates) and 
    • customizable code formatting.
    • Cylon debugger which can debug on multiple SWFs simultaneously with support for conditional & simple breakpoints.  

The current beta of Amethyst has breakpoints, watch variables, locals, call-stack, step-into/step-out/step-over plus drilldown expansion in the debugging windows or in hovering debug tips in the code editor. There's a small movie showing a few debugging features of Amethyst here:

References:

  1. New IDE for Flex Developers Hits the Market | Cloud Computing Journal
  2. Amethyst (Adobe Flash Platform IDE)

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Pros & Cons of use of Adobe Flex for iPhone/iPad Developers

Below are the pros and cons of Adobe Flex (http://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html) environment for iOS development.

Pros:
1. No specific Hardware need: No need for Mac OS X system for development ( works on both platforms Mac & Windows).
2. Code sharing across multiple platforms: Run the same code on other mobile platforms (BlackBerry Playbook and Android), desktops & web applications (browsers)
3. SAP Data Integration: Ease of integration with SAP backend & Web Services (or to other standard data sources)
4. Improvement Developer Productivity (Adobe Flex / ActionScript would be easier to learn for a Java developer than Objective C).
5. Design Time Integration: Eclipse based developer (Flash Builder) environment or developer tools can be integrated with SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio.
6. Low Training Cost, there are plenty of examples and development tutorials available for free to get started with Adobe Flex. 
7. SAP NetWeaver GateWay Integration: https://community.wdf.sap.corp/sbs/groups/adobe-flex/blog/2011/09/02/flash-builder-and-sap-netweaver-gateway-integration
Cons:
1. Dependency on Flash Platform.
2. Licensing Cost of Software:  Cost of Development tool, Adobe Flash Builder Premium license costs $699. (on single license purchase, there may be discounted price for bulk purchase)

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Save Development Time with Ready made Flash/Flex Components

Adobe Flex Icon
Adobe Flex Icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


  1. Flash Components - Buy & Sell Adobe Flex Components: marketplace to buy and sell stunning adobe flex based web components.
  2. Flextras - UI Flex componentsSave Development Time with all the Flextras components which now have a fully functional, feature complete, free edition.  You can download them from the Flextras web site; but source code is not included with the free edition of the components. 

Thursday, December 29, 2011

HTML 5 vs Flash

English: Adobe flash cs3 logo self made
Logotipo oficial: HTML 5  VS

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)


Note: HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and Flex are complementary technologies that can work seamlessly together.

HTML 5:
How does an HTML based data driven application works
1. User request the server page
2. Web server locates the file and passes it to the application server for processing.
3. Business logic of the code accesses the system resources like database, mail server and file system.
4. Server generates a dynamic HTML page from the requested data and service.
5. This dynamically generated HTML page is returned to the browser for rendering.

Apache Flex
How adding an compiled SWF file in the server works
1. User request the server page
2. Web server locates the file and passes it to the application server for processing.
3. Business logic of the code accesses the system resources like database, mail server and file system.
4. Server generates a dynamic HTML page from the requested data and service.
5. the generated HTML code with and embedded SWF file reference. (JavaScript code auto-generated by the Flash Builder is used for embedding SWF file into the HTML file).
6. the HTML code reaches browser for rendering
7. Browser requests that the SWF file be downloaded and rendered in Flash Player (as a small widget or an entire application view in the HTML page).
8. the SWF file in the browser can directly communicate with the server code. This allows for dynamic content to update the Flex application UI without refreshing the HTML page and decreases the number of requests to the server and the amount of content that is transferred over the network.

Another good comparision of Flash vs HTML 5 is available at the website.
http://flashvhtml.com/

Flex framework automatically takes care of adjusting the application layout as per the form factor of the device running the application while in HTML 5 the developer needs to take of detecting the platform and device and laying out the components as per the target form factor. But this gap is getting closed widget frameworks like JQuery which are also supporting eventing and data binding and the  forward momentum is with Html and JS.

Read this Interesting Blog published by Gartner about "HTML 5 vs Flash".

Features not possible to implement without Flash.

1. Copy to Clipboard

As of Today (September2014) its not possible to implement Copy to Clipboard functionality in a web page that works consistently and flawlessly across all major browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer). Suppose you want to develop a button on click of which you want to copy to your Windows or Mac Clipboard some text content say value of any text area within a form. This can only be achieved by using Flash. With JavaScript only approach you would only be able to do this for Internet Explorer (IE). Presently the most reliable solution is to use ZeroClipboard (http://zeroclipboard.org/) which internally make use of a hidden Flash movie and JavaScript interface to achieve this functionality in a secure way. 

Related Articles

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Adobe Flex is now Apache Flex


Adobe has submitted the code for Flex framework along with number of other related components (including Testing Framework, BlazeDS, Falcon compiler) to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) so that it could be managed as an independent project.

The Flex project proposal has been accepted by Apache Software Foundation.

For further details please refer Adobe's official blog: http://blog.everythingflex.com/2011/11/16/apache-flex-update-from-adobe/. However,  Adobe might continue to dedicate its employees full time for further development of the Flex.

Discussions related to this recent announcements regarding Flex and the Flash Platform.



Incubator proposal of Flex could be found at the link below:
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/FlexProposal

Earlier Adobe also announced that it would not develop Flash Player for new mobile devices following the Flash Player 11.1 release for Android and BlackBerry Playbook, and would instead focus on tooling for HTML5, which will eventually provide similar functionality as that of Flash without requiring a separate plug-in.

Adobe will however continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. More details about this could be found at this blog http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2011/11/flash-to-focus-on-pc-browsing-and-mobile-apps-adobe-to-more-aggressively-contribute-to-html5.html

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Building Web & Mobile Applications for SAP Backend using Adobe Flex, updated

Development

SAP Provides following development tools for Adobe Flex application development:
•SAP Visual Composer (VC)
•SAP Business Objects Xcelsius


Integration

•Adobe Flex applications built on Adobe Flex Builder can be integrated to SAP WebDynpro Java & ABAP using SAP Flash Island technology.
Adobe Flex applications built on Adobe Flex Builder can be deployed over SAP NetWeaver Web AS Java and could be made available to end users using SAP NetWeaver Portal (formerly Enterprise Portal).


How to connect to sap from mobile using flex ?

With usage of Flex complex business processes are simplified and more interactivity is introduced dealing with display of rich data. Oracle, SAP, Business Objects, and other enterprise software companies are also integrating Flex technology within their enterprise applications.

SAP NetWeaver Gateway technology provides a standard based simple approach to connect devices, environments and platforms to SAP applications & solutions. It enables development of innovative people centric solutions for SAP solutions into new experiences such as: 

It offers connectivity to SAP R/3 application using any programming language or model without the need for SAP knowledge by leveraging REST services and OData/ATOM protocols.


Adobe® Flash Builder Plugin for SAP NetWeaver Gateway Services enables Flex developers to build web and mobile applications that access SAP data via NetWeaver Gateway Services (NGS). 


The plugin provides features that enable Adobe Flex developers to more easily build web and mobile applications that connect to SAP systems through SAP NetWeaver Gateway. The plugin works within the existing Flash Builder Data Centric Development (DCD) workflow.

Simple wizards allow developers to

  1. connect with and browse a Gateway Server’s Service Catalog 
  2. generate ActionScript service wrappers and value objects for selected services
  3. Flash Builder Data Service Panel and Design View drag-and-drop integration
The new Adobe Flash Builder Plugin for SAP NetWeaver Gateway can be downloaded from the link below: 

Adobe Flash Builder Plug in for NetWeaver Gateway

Read the document below for details about the installation instructions & how to use this plugin.
Getting Started with Adobe Flash Builder Plugin for SAP NetWeaver Gateway Services

Below is the video of how to use Adobe Flash Builder Plugin for SAP NetWeaver Gateway Services




Which is better React Native or Native iOS and Android Development for building Mobile applications ?

  React Native vs Native (iOS, Android)   Properties/Feature React Native   Native (iOS) – Swift / Object...

Labels