Best approach suggestions?

[danthomas]

Hi,

Could anyone summarize for me the merits/disadvantages of various backend and connection technologies for Flash? I'm in severe need to start developing web-based applications but can't decide which route to take. I'm pretty confident with Flash design and database design, its the bit in between and the platforms to use that I'm less clued up on, or spoilt for choice if you like!

Any comments gratefully recieved and appreciated

Dan

[dgrigg]

If you are comforable with coldfusion and have the money to poney up for flash remoting I would go that way. It is probably the tightest package for tying flash to a database.

Remoting for Java and ASP.net works to, but in my experience cf is the way to go if you are just learning server side scripting.

With MX2004 though there is now pretty good support for web services so you could build webserivces to access a database and go that route directly from flash but then it depends on how much access you have to the host server, I doubt many ISP's will let you put a web service on their servers.

[aversion]

it's hard to say, it's becoming such a specialised area that you should really focus on one side or the other, but if you do want to cover back and front yourself I would recommend coldfusion as it's the easiest to implement and since it's own by macromedia integrates well with flash, it isn't cheap though.

personally i use a LAMP (linux, apache, mySQL, PHP) set up, it's free and flexible. There is an excellent 3rd party AMF version of flash remoting called AMFPHP which is still in beta but is stable and usable, macromedia have tacitly endorsed it with articles on their site, also suggesting they're not creating their own version of remoting for PHP.

I would recommend learning java if you're starting from scratch, it's an excellent language with a lot of uses. Also learn XML if you don't, play around with XML servers, like moock's unity as they can be an excellent way of moving data around between clients/server.

[danthomas]

Hmm, decisions decisions eh? I'm currently a student in the process of begining my own business so I have the saviour of educational licences on my side so coldfusion is tempting, however the availability and wide-use of mysql & co is also attractive. Which in your opinions is easiest to learn? And which has the most available support (e.g. forums etc)?

I think a better approach would be for me to try both, but i'm still interested in opinions of the masses...

[aversion]

If I was starting with a blank slate i would learn java, it's not as easy as CF or as free as PHP but it's probably the most powerful language 'on' the web and is of the same very general ilk as actionscript.

[devnull_2k]

I use PHP's nuSOAP to allow interaction between a database and Flash. It uses Flash Professional's web service connector.

It has been very easy and trouble free so far.

[SJT]

These days you're pretty much guaranteed to find PHP and MySQL as part of a hosting plan.
In the end though, it depends on the application; Av is right, java is much more powerful and solid, but I would say it's definitely a much bigger challenge to learn than PHP or CF.

[aversion]

Originally posted by devnull_2k
I use PHP's nuSOAP to allow interaction between a database and Flash. It uses Flash Professional's web service connector.

It has been very easy and trouble free so far.

I haven't even installed the flash pro demo yet I'm ashamed to say, partly through being too busy but also because I feel so pessimistic about it, it needs to be 'sorted' before I would consider buying the studio package. There are some features of pro that I'd like to look at though, including the web service connector and OOP stuff in AS 2.0.

[dgrigg]

We just started using it on one machine here to 'take a peak' and while some of the multimedia features are really nice I was really surprised to get some AS 2.0 error messages when I used some of Macromedia's own components. That did not instill a huge amount of confidence.

I also holding off making the switch because I really don't want to have to rewrite all my components into AS 2.0 yet.