The two major trends transforming software right now are Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and Cloud Computing / Software as a Service (SaaS or PaaS). These trends are driven by two needs:
- Full client capabilities, which allow software to perform optimally and increase usability
- Easy deployment, which allows developers to focus on business needs instead of building infrastructure
The combination of RIA and Cloud is the future of software because it provides full client capabilities and easy deployment. The chart below illustrates this in comparison to the other major software architectures (main-frame, client / server, and web).
In line with these trends Adobe and Salesforce.com announced today that they are working together to unite Rich Internet Applications and The Cloud. At the core of this announcement is a developer preview of the Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com tool. This tool enables developers to easily build intuitive user interfaces with Flex which connect to the Force.com cloud platform and Salesforce.com CRM data. These applications can be deployed either in the browser or on the desktop using Adobe AIR. When utilizing Adobe AIR, the applications can still function when users are disconnected. Later, when users reconnect, the changes are synchronized with Force.com using the LiveCycle Data Services synchronization engine.
Being able to connect Flex applications to Salesforce.com / Force.com has been possible (and easy) since I co-created what was originally called the Flex Toolkit for Apex. So while it has been possible to build Rich Cloud Applications for a few years, today’s announcement is significant for a few reasons:
- Adobe and Salesforce are now officially partnered together around Rich Cloud Applications
- Much better, officially supported developer tooling
- Much better offline data synchronization
It’s really exciting to see how the vision of Rich Cloud Applications is becoming reality!
If you’d like to learn more or try out the new tooling check out these resources:
- Get the developer preview and watch video demos
- Get inspired and see how it works
- Watch a video walk-through
Another great way to learn more is to sign up for a Webinar / Tech Talk that I will be co-presenting.
Let me know what you think about this exciting new partnership and developer tooling.
17 Comments
Hot stuff. I’m a big fan of Flash in the Cloud. Options are always great (GAE, EC2, Force.com) but once Adobe sponsors a solution that’s a big positive note for ALL options. It shows all the other developers that this type of technology is important. Of course it’s great for SalesForce as a lot of people will naturally jump onto that solution. Looking forward to playing with the tools!
This is an awesome news… Thanks James for sharing this valuable info..
Been working with Salesforce and Flex for the past 2 years. Pretty powerful stuff. The two technologies compliment each other pretty well. Any effort to make the integration easier is a big win. My big complaint is there anyway you can get SFDC to offer AMF? What a world of difference it would make over the 300 records/sec in XML.
Hi Mark,
I wish that Salesforce would add AMF support. That would be awesome. Don’t they have a feature request website? (Ideas? Or something?) Want to create the request and post the link here so we can all vote for it?
-James
I completely agree with you about being able to make AMF calls. We need fire up your demo on how much more efficient, faster, and smaller AMF is compared to SOAP.
The ultimate would be Data Messaging and Management with data visualization of your model in Eclipse with code generation to your cloud objects in Salesforce. They should at least start with Blaze and Java with AMF since it is FREE and OSS, please let me know if I can assist with your lobby efforts.
Regards,
Mike
Look Force.com & Amazon cloud platform cost you from day one. I like GAE model use first for free & pay as you succeed. If Flex is open source then Force.com developer account and other things should be free to developer and charges should be made if you scale your application like GAE.
Hi Kevin,
GAE is a great platform but it differs from Force.com since GAE is more general purpose an just provides the bare minimum infrastructure. Both have their benefits and it ultimately depends on what your needs are.
-James
Hey james, hope you’re ok.
Do you know how to avoid the double request response when using the sales force toolkit.. I’m doing for example, a login request and the response from the server comes twice., other example I trouble with, is when I create a case object, the creation of the case appears twice on sales force web page, and while debugging my flex app, the response of creation arrives 3 1/2 times.. Do you have any idea of this behavior.
Thank you..
Hi Pedro,
This is a bug in Flex 3.4.0. If you use Flex 3.4.1 or something older than 3.4.0 then this won’t happen. Let me know if that works.
-James
Thank you very much James, that was the solution to the double response.
Hello again James, sorry if I bother you, but I’m having this problem now.
Let me explain my architecture
I have a library project with the sales force toolkit source code named SalesforceToolkit , it works perfectly when I use the library in an application project, but what happen!, I have several libraries in my project one is “OEComponents” where I have reusable components in there I have an error report component that will connect to salesforce through the SalesforceToolkit library. After coding everything I got a LoginFault saying the information below
Warning: Domain http://www.salesforce.com does not explicitly specify a meta-policy, but Content-Type of policy file https://www.salesforce.com/crossdomain.xml is ‘text/x-cross-domain-policy’. Applying meta-policy ‘by-content-type’.
Error: Request for resource at https://www.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/15.0?1000.8600610275753 by requestor from http://sagitarius/flex/OEComponents.swf is denied due to lack of policy file permissions.
*** Security Sandbox Violation ***
Connection to https://www.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/15.0?1000.8600610275753 halted – not permitted from http://sagitarius/flex/OEComponents.swf
Beforehand Thanks, it seems there’re no much people working with this toolkit but I do :(
Hi Pedro,
Check these out:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/307048/does-anyone-know-if-the-crossdomain-policy-file-at-salesforcecom-has-changed
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/339487/login-error-connecting-to-salesforcecom-from-flex
Let me know if those help.
-James
Nothing James. It seems salesforce have to update their policy file. I’ve tried a lotta of possible solutions, all with the same debug info:
Warning: Domain http://www.salesforce.com does not explicitly specify a meta-policy, but Content-Type of policy file http://www.salesforce.com/crossdomain.xml is ‘text/x-cross-domain-policy’. Applying meta-policy ‘by-content-type’.
Don’t know what to do.
Hey Pedro,
That is just a warning. It shouldn’t keep your application from running. Also this is a policy file on http not https. The toolkit should always use https. Also data usually uses uses a geographic host like na1.salesforce.com. Only login usually uses www.
Other than the warning are you seeing other issues?
-James
The warning appears, but I don’t get the LoginResult event.. just a Fault event.. the log in is unsuccessful. though I can’t make queries because I’m not logged in.
*** Security Sandbox Violation ***
Connection to https://www.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/15.0?1000.8600610275753 halted – not permitted from http://sagitarius/flex/OEComponents.swf
That’s what I get on fault handler
I believe your SWF file must be on a https server.
Hey James.. finally problem solve!!
It was all that https/http configuration.. Check this link https://na6.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/admin_sessions.htm for future references to other developers, in salesforce settings there’s a checkbox which says Require secure connections (HTTPS). We unchecked it on our salesforce settings and it works, also I have my flex tag like this
Thank you once again James
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[...] on top of Salesforce.com / Force.com today use the existing Flex Toolkit for Force.com. The new Flash Builder for Force.com tool today only supports desktop applications with Adobe AIR – but will also support web [...]