[Flash] Val and Flash MX

[Marcus Bointon]

on 22/1/03 16:25, Olaf Schmidtmann at os at brainbits.net wrote:

> I don´t work with ColdFusion but I heard that you can get the data DIRECTLY
> into Flash without the POST (sendAndLoad) method you have to use when
> working with PHP (but you may be right).

It may well be that Flash has specific commands that talk to CF, but I would
suspect that it's just a mechanism that hides the HTTP transaction, given
that CF is a server-side technology. It could be the case that CF has its
own protocol that Flash can talk too, but given that CF also works through
regular web servers, I would suspect it doesn't.

CF isn't itself a database, but it talks to them, just like PHP does. VPHP
would probably give better performance than CF possibly could.

> A linked db would be faster and better. Maybe there is a way: Flash does
> support XML streams but this just works for servers only I think. You could
> send a XML-query you get a XML-object back. Something like this...

There's a name for this: SOAP. Flash can do it already, and I'd just love it
if it was part of QuickTime. It could also be rolled into Val in some way,
though things like SOAP represent quite a large overhead so they're not
efficient for closed environments (like web servers), but are great for
abstracting away things like joins between huge multinationals ;^)

> What I think could be gained is:
> 1) Ease of use (simplistic enviroment)
> 2) Speed
> 3) dream: build flash db-apps for on- and offline use

Ok, but you can't do this without embedding database client protocols into
the flash plugin, and since it already has a workable HTTP interface (which
is of course database independent), there's little incentive for this.

> Don´t just say NO :-)

I'm not, but I think it's probably Macromedia you should be asking...

Marcus
-- 
Marcus Bointon
Synchromedia Limited: Putting you in the picture

marcus at synchromedia.co.uk | http://www.synchromedia.co.uk