Damon Cooper's BLOG

LiveCycle Data Services vs BlazeDS

2010-08-19T14:10:00-04:00

The question of when should you consider LiveCycle Data Services vs BlazeDS for Flex/Flash application development comes up frequently, and is documented elsewhere, but let me also tackle it here, since I'm engineering director for both BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services at Adobe: BlazeDS

Previously only available in LiveCycle Data Services ES, Adobe's server-side remoting and messaging technologies are now available as open source software. Using BlazeDS, developers can easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real time to Flex and AIR applications. The technologies included in BlazeDS, along with the Action Message Format (AMF) protocol specification, are being contributed to open source under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL v3) and are available at http://opensource.adobe.com/blazeds.

Choose BlazeDS if you need:

Ease of integration with existing Java" code
Fast binary data delivery and transfer
Publish/subscribe and push messaging over standard HTTP
Limited scalability and performance
Limited deployment options
No support options

Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES

Offered as a solution component within the LiveCycle ES family, LiveCycle Data Services ES is a complete data infrastructure for enterprise Flex and AIR applications. If you require a commercially licensed version of BlazeDS, or you need to go beyond the infrastructure features of BlazeDS by adding higher level data functionality, then LiveCycle Data Services ES is right for you. Find out more at the Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES Product Home Page

In particular, choose LiveCycle Data Services ES if you need any of the following:

High-performance data streaming, paging, and data synchronization
High scalability of numbers of simultaneously connected users
Reduced development and maintenance costs for complex database applications
Offline support for Adobe AIR
Ultra-RAD Model-Driven Flex Application Development and Deployment
Integration with portals
LiveCycle connectivity to integrate RIAs with business processes and document services
Advanced deployment options for maximum scalability, security and flexibility
Access to Adobe enterprise support resources to help you run business-critical applications

For real-time applications, LiveCycle Data Services can push up to 400,000 messages to 500 concurrent clients with an average latency under 15 ms on a single dual-processor machine. For more details on the performance characteristics of LiveCycle Data Services for real-time high-performance applications, check out the Adobe LiveCycle Data Services Performance Brief. Comparison Chart:
(NOTE: "Fiber-aware assembler" below is Flex Model-Driven Development and Deployment)

Damon

NEW! F5 BigIP LTM and Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES2 Configuration Guide

2010-07-19T15:40:00-04:00

We'll be publishing this officially shortly, but we've put together a configuration guide for setting up and using an F5 BigIP LTM solution with Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES2 and I thought I'd share it here.

F5's BigIP LTM solution performs load balancing, SSL termination (thereby offloading SSL decryption for RTMPS or HTTPS to the F5 BigIP machine), and HTTP-based authentication. F5's BigIP LTM solution is capable of handling traffic volumes from 1 to 12 Gigabits per second, depending on which model is used, making it an excellent addition to real-time Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES2 real-time application deployments. Check out the F5 BigIP LTM and LiveCycle Data Services ES2 Configuration Guide PDF. And find out more about the F5 BigIP LTM solution here. [UPDATE 1: Configuration Guide updated July 28, 2010] Enjoy! Damon

Steve Jobs: Customers pay Apple to make those choices [for them]

2010-06-02T10:02:00-04:00

Steve Jobs: "Customers pay Apple to make those choices [for them]": Online WSJ Article. Nice. Here's to Freedom of Choice:

Damon

Adobe Flash Platform Evangelism Kit Now Available

2010-05-28T17:46:00-04:00

Just posted over at the Official Flex Team Blog is the Adobe Flash Platform Evangelism Kit. Grab it. Keep it handy. Show it.

Damon

Got Dropped Calls?

2010-05-24T09:12:00-04:00

If you have an iPhone and have experienced dropped calls, you aren't alone and there's a website that's been set up where you can find out, quantitatively, what your actual dropped call experience has been. Over at http://www.worstphoneever.com, you can upload your iPhone mobile baseband crash logs and have them analyzed, anonymously and get a full report of when, where and how many calls have been dropped from your iPhone. Of course, they state they're pulling together data for a class-action lawsuit, but whatever: just knowing how bad your experience has actually been is good to know. Especially with AT&T here in the US raising their fees to get out of an iPhone contract to over $300.00, and the new Android Froyo goodness about to hit the streets. My dropped call count on my iPhone 3GS in the past 12 months? 150 calls! Ugh. My full iPhone dropped call report for the past 12 months here: ttp://www.worstphoneever.com/users/652

Damon

Android Real-Time Trader App with LCDS, Flex 4 and AIR!

2010-05-20T18:23:00-04:00

Sweet! Christophe Coenraets demos his Flex 4/LCDS Trader Desktop sample application running on an Android phone using LCDS real-time messaging, AIR, Flex 4 and Flash Player 10.1. Demo below, and Christophe's blog has details: http://coenraets.org/blog/2010/05/android-trader-application-with-flex-4-and-air/

Damon

Fly a plane! On Android: LCDS real-time messaging, Player 10.1 and AIR

2010-05-14T09:49:00-04:00

Cool use of LCDS real-time messaging in a very cool Android AIR app used as a controller for a flight sim. Adobe evangelist Michaël Chaize put this demo together. Just hit play below:

Will you be able to build sophisticated mobile real-time applications using the goodness of LiveCycle Data Services for more serious applications? You bet. More on the demo here: http://www.riagora.com/2010/05/become-an-air-pilot/ Damon

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch interview at Web 2.0

2010-05-06T12:58:00-04:00

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch was interviewed at the Web 2.0 Expo conference this week and he covered an number of interesting topics, including Flash and HTML5, innovation, cross-platform development, Apple and walled gardens versus openness, freedom of choice on the web, and more: Here is the interview:

Enjoy! Damon

Adobe LiveCycle Data Services 3 Performance Brief has been published!

2010-05-03T13:25:00-04:00

Get it here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/pdfs/lcdses2_performance_brief.pdf Enjoy! Damon

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Available!

2010-04-30T08:13:00-04:00

Adobe CS5 is now available for download! I've been running it for a while now and I can say it absolutely, totally rocks. I know very little about Photoshop (big Photoshop Elements user here) but I was using Content-Aware Fill to patch up photos within 10 seconds! (Check out a few demos of this killer feature HERE, HERE, and HERE.) If you would have told me this would be possible one day with software, I would have told you it was pure science fiction. Wow. Remove annoying Uncle Ned or that long-dumped Ex out of your old vacation photos and it's like they were never even there! :) And that's just one feature in Photoshop! Adobe Creative Suite 5 is a killer release and a total no-brainer upgrade, IMO. Start here: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/ And for a set of great overview tutorials on the various Adobe CS5 products and their features, check out the Adobe TV CS5 home page here: http://tv.adobe.com/channel/how-to/learn-cs5/ Enjoy! Damon

OSX Flash Player 'Gala' Prerelease available with native GPU acceleration

2010-04-28T21:48:00-04:00

In the "well, that didn't take long" category, Adobe released a Flash Player pre-release code-named "Gala", that offers native Mac OS X native GPU acceleration of H.264 video. Get it from Adobe Labs here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/gala/ Enjoy! Damon

LCDS 3.1 Hotfix Posted

2010-04-27T15:50:00-04:00

A new LCDS 3.1 mutiple-hotfix patch has been posted that addressed several issues: 1. LCDS-1210 - Looping Connection Write on Ack State 2 in Reactor.java.
2. 2598186 - RTMPS channel got disconnected at high message received rate.
3. BLZ-510 - ConcurrentModificationException with outbound throttling.
Grab it here: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/840/cpsid_84090.html Damon

RUMOR: No software will be able to run on Mac OS X 10.7 without being approved and signed by Apple

2010-04-24T09:03:00-04:00

I really hope this isn't true. I think it would herald the end of Apple, honestly, and I think the backlash from developers, customers and Apple shareholders would be immediate, definitive and overwhelming. Now, I normally wouldn't comment on rumors like this, but this one, if true, would, I believe, literally change the computing landscape overnight and be the largest single self-inflicted gunshot wound a company has ever dealt itself, and it was at least worthy enough to be picked up by MacDailyNews and others. If confirmed, it would put Mr. Jobs squarely in the role of "big brother", controlling what applications customers could and couldn't run on their computers. Applications like DVD rippers, Bit Torrent, competitive software and the like would surely not be approved, and catapult Mr. Jobs up there with the likes of Howard Hughes in the eccentricity and control categories. The white gloves, frantic door knob wiipe-downs and Spruce Goose surely wouldn't be far behind. Anyway, here is a quote from the MacDailyNews story, quoting Rixstep, and the story link: "Developers planning on marketing software for 10.7 will submit their products to the App Store as iPhone and now iPad developers have already done. 10.7 will have kernel support for ('insistence on') binaries signed with Apple's root certificate. No software will be able to run on Mac OS X 10.7 without being approved and signed by Apple, Inc." http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/24948/ UPDATE 4/26/2010: Steve Job has apparently responded to an email query regarding this rumor and has denied it is true. See http://www.macstories.net/news/steve-jobs-no-mac-app-store/ . Damon

Flex 4 and LiveCycle Data Services 3 Performance Part 2: The Client Side

2010-04-23T12:14:00-04:00

Christophe Coenraets provides an example desktop-trading application using Flex 4 and LiveCycle Data Services 3 that demonstrates the power of this powerful technology stack from Adobe. The recent explosion in the number of Financial Services firms interested in building real-time trader desktop applications using Flex 4 and LiveCycle Data Services 3 makes this topic a hot one. Last week I blogged HERE about the performance of LiveCycle Data Services 3.x on the server-side. I discussed how LCDS 3.x can stream over 400,000 messages per second spread over 500 clients with an average latency of under 15 milliseconds per message.

Christophe, in his blog entry, "Performance Tuning: Real Time Trader Desktop with Flex and LCDS", takes the next step and provides an answer the question, "How many messages per second can ONE CLIENT consume and render, and with what latency? Damon

Forrester Research: Does HTML 5 Herald The End Of RIA Plug-Ins?

2010-04-21T18:04:00-04:00

Someone just brought this just-released Forrester Research report to my attention: Does HTML 5 Herald The End Of RIA Plug-Ins? Not Really Executive Summary: "Will HTML 5 make rich Internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight obsolete? For at least the next five years, the answer is a definite "no"; inconsistent implementations of the draft HTML 5 specification and immature tooling make building HTML 5 apps that work consistently across browsers and operating systems a real challenge. Furthermore, this "either/or" scenario is driven only by vendor politics, not by developer realities. Ultimately, HTML 5 and RIA platforms will be complementary technologies, and enterprise development shops will need to invest in both approaches to deliver expressive applications that combine reach and richness. " Damon