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Moving Complex Data Structures Across the Web with WDDX
types, and descriptors that allow the data to be manipulated on a target system
between arbitrary application servers.
When you use WDDX in ColdFusion pages, you typically use the ColdFusion
tag and the JavaScript utility classes that are installed as
on your local host.
Working with application-level data
The real strength of WDDX is clear if you think of the client and server as a unified
platform for applications. There is a subtle, but profound, distinction between this
view and the traditional view of an application in which services are partitioned
between the client and server.
In client-server, a client might query a database and get a record set that can be
browsed, updated and returned to the server without requiring a persistent
connection. In this scenario, data is highly structured and that structure is integrated
into the client side of the application ahead of time.
While this style of data binding relies on the presence of data sources that expose
well-structured data of known types, WDDX is designed to transport
application-level data structures to facilitate seamless computing between the client
and the server side of a Web application. Application-level data structures generally
differ from data exposed by traditional data sources, such as databases. These
structures are generally more complex and ad hoc, with dynamic structure. WDDX
lets you work with this data without the overhead of setting up a data source for
every type of data needed. Therefore, it integrates nicely with and complements
other approaches that rely on existing data sources.
Data exchange across application servers
The other common use of WDDX is expected to be the transfer of complex,
structured data seamlessly between different application server platforms. For
example, an application based on ColdFusion at one business could send a purchase
order to a supplier running a CGI-based system. The supplier can then extract
information from the order and pass it to a shipping company running an
application based on ASP. Unlike traditional client-server approaches (including
distributed object systems), minimal-to-no prior knowledge of the source or target
systems is required by any of the other system components.
Time zone processing
Because producers and consumers of WDDX packets can be in geographically
dispersed locations, using time zone information during the serialization and
deserialization phases becomes critical for correct date-time processing.
All ColdFusion WDDX serializers (CFML and JavaScript) have a
attribute or property that specifies whether to use time zone information in the
serialization process. The default value is True.
/CFIDE/scripts/wddx.js
useTimezoneInfo
347
cfwddx
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