Chapter 16: Data Integration (Flash Professional Only) - MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-USING FLASH Use Manual

CHAPTER 16
Data Integration (Flash
Professional Only)
Macromedia Flash Professional 8 provides a flexible, component-based architecture and
object model for connecting to external data sources, binding data to user interface (UI)
components, and managing what data is displayed and how it's updated at the source.
The Macromedia website and Flash Help has many tutorials on creating rich Internet data
applications in Flash. For downloadable examples and tutorials that use the data components,
see "Additional resources" on page
This chapter begins with an overview of data integration, provides a quick example you can
walk through to become familiar with how data integration works, provides general
workflows, and then explains data binding, which is the core functionality of the Flash data
integration architecture, and the other layers in the Flash data integration architecture.
There are four main layers in the Flash data integration architecture:
The data binding layer provides a way to map data elements to properties of Flash data
components, which can then be mapped to UI components. In other words, you bind to a
data source and then select the elements you need to display in your application and to
update the source. Flash also integrates objects such as formatters and encoders to let you
control how data is propagated and formatted among components. See
(Flash Professional only)" on page
The data connectivity layer provides connector components that let you connect to an
external data source to send and receive data. You can connect to a variety of sources, such
as web services and XML. For more information, see
Professional only)" on page
The data management layer provides a component that enables intelligent supervision of
common data operations, such as editing, sorting, filtering, aggregation, and translation of
changes. For more information, see
on page 419.
390.
394.
412.
"Data management (Flash Professional only)"
"Data binding
"Data connectivity (Flash
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