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A
akash87
Participant
February 9, 2010
Question

Standalone flash data application help plz

  • February 9, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 411 views

I'll point out the current scenario of my problem,

  • Its a data heavy application
  • a rich UI is required
  • has to be standalone, not browser based
  • the application i'm building is leaning towards a statistical tool so it would be wonderful if i can use data representation components like 3D charts etc etc.
  • I have not decided if i wanna make this an open source application or not so one small feature i'll need help with is how to protect the application from being decompiled, if needed!
  • Obviously i have to use a database, duh, but what about a choice of database? any recommendations? if im trying to make a AIR application i can use mysql but its not as easy as using Coldfusion.
  • If i do use coldfusion, i would like to know when im releasing the air application, would the end-user need to install anything specific apart from the AIR framework? or would the packaged release version of the application be adequate enough for using the application still containing the database and the coldfusion components?

Any kind of input would be of great help to me!

Thank You in Advance! 🙂

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    ilssac
    ilssac
    Inspiring
    February 9, 2010

    The only advice I can give you is that the last two bullet points are not mutually exulsive.

    It is quite possible to build AIR applications that make use of a ColdFusion back-end middle layer.

    Obviously in this scenario you are not building your UI in HTML using ColdFusion, the ColdFusion would be relegate to receving, processing, retreiving and sending data to the AIR front end.

    But it is a path that Adobe toutes heavily.

    Other then that, I have yet had the oportunity to actually try this so I don't know how it stacks up to other solutions to this particular problem.

    To exapnd on your last point an AIR application is simply a Flash application running on the desktop rather then in a browser.  So the end user just needs a recent enough version of Flash installed.

    Then the AIR application can easily make http request for data from a web based resource powerd by ColdFusion that can work with all the back end databases options available to CF.

    A
    akash87Author
    Participant
    February 10, 2010

    Thanks for the quick response. To continue the discussion,

    when you say the coldFusion is touted by Adobe heavily, what exactly do you mean?

    I'll draw a simple sketch of how i think i want the system to be :-

    1. Standalone application with an embedded database support.
    2. The Business logic layer should not be decompilable, which probably means it should not be a flash component. Yet i want the whole system to be ready thru just one installation,i.e, the AIR application installation.

    Thanks In Advance

    ilssac
    ilssac
    Inspiring
    February 11, 2010

    akash87 wrote:

    Thanks for the quick response. To continue the discussion,

    when you say the coldFusion is touted by Adobe heavily, what exactly do you mean?

    Adobe is heavily promoting the AIR, FLEX, FLASH, ColdFuion family of products and how each can be used individually or in various combinations for all kinds of purposes.

    I'll draw a simple sketch of how i think i want the system to be :-

    1. Standalone application with an embedded database support.


    If you want the database to be completely on the client end, then I beleive that Air defults to the Apache Derby database product for its client side data needs, but I do not know if it can easily make use of other database tools as well.  But one of the supposed strengts of AIR is that it easily consumes web based data resources as well, so it can be used as the front end to someting running on your server if that supports your project as well.

    1. The Business logic layer should not be decompilable, which probably means it should not be a flash component. Yet i want the whole system to be ready thru just one installation,i.e, the AIR application installation.

    I am not aware of any programming lanugage that can not be decompiled.  There are decompilers for every language every created by man as far as I am aware.  So if you really want your Business logic layer to be protected it might be better to think of the distributed model where the Buisnnes layer is on your server where you can control it and protect it.

    If you deliver the code to the clients computer, clients with the knowledge could decompile it if they wished to.

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