Chapter 4: Architecting Flex Applications - MACROMEDIA FLEX-GETTING STARTED WITH FLEX Getting Started

CHAPTER 4
Architecting Flex Applications
This chapter describes the Macromedia Flex development process. It describes coding practices,
multitier applications, and application architecture. It also includes information about MXML
URL parameters, the Flex development environment, and Flex development tools.
When you develop a Flex application, you use the same iterative process that you use for other
types of web application files, such as HTML, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Microsoft Active Server
Pages (ASP), and Macromedia ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML). Unlike a set of static
HTML pages or HTML templates created using JSP, ASP, or CFML, the files in a Flex
application are compiled into a single binary SWF file. JSP, ASP, and ColdFusion are templating
systems in which application processing occurs on the server and data is dynamically added to an
HTML template and delivered to the client in an HTML page.
Contents
About the Flex coding process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Working with a multitier application model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Improving application start-up time and performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Architecting an application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Summary of Flex application features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
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