There is a bug in FF’s iframe handling. To get around it you need to click on the results pane which then launches the test. I’m still working on a new version that will fix this.

-James

1) My best guess is that in the case of E4X something is happening at a lower level in Flash Player than I can get to with my tests. So the ~100ms extra on the E4X tests should probably be in the parse category.
2) In general SOAP has a lot more parsing overhead than RESTful XML.
3) The XML tests are RESTful XML using HTTPService in Flex.
4) E4X has lower up front costs because it doesn’t parse the XML. But you take a it when you actually query and interact with the XML data. Also E4X is a different language than ActionScript so many times the decision is made depending on which language you want to use. I always prefer AMF to XML.

I hope that helps.

-James

Very nice app! I have some questions.

1) Why is there a significant difference between the transfer time for Soap AS and Soap e4x? Similarly for the flex xml AS and flex xml e4x. Isn’t it the same data that is getting transferred in the two cases?
2) Also, the difference between soap and xml is significant. Why so? Is it just due to the soap envelope overhead or some thing else?
3) When you say xml (as in flex xml AS), would REST using HTTPService fall in this category?
4) The difference between e4x and AS is interesting! The parse time is high for AS but render time is much lower. If you render many times, it looks like you are better off using AS. Is that an appropriate conclusion?

Thanks,
Lakshmi

Firefox 3 broke some stuff that used to work with IFrame’s. I’m working on a new version of Census that will fix this.

I think in most circumstances it would be faster to do the translation on the server from Web Services to AMF because:
1) Servers are usually faster than clients
2) Server to server is usually a shorter, faster network route than server to client

I hope that helps.

-James

First of all, great app. Second, not sure why but it makes my Firefox 3.0.1 with Flash 9.0.115 crash when I run it. IE works good.

Another question… If you already have web services created and you don’t have access to make those web services into remote objects, do you think it’s better performance wise to have a translation on an intermediate java server from web services to remote objects (close in proximity to the web services server) and then to the client, or just hit the web service directly. Thanks.

Yes. That is strange. I’ll investigate.

-James

Compiling to dhtml is a simple matter of opening the xml in Laszlo Explorer and clicking the SOLO button to get a zipped directory of the current application config.

-Brian