JamieG Analysis

Recently my work has taken me into researching and developing RIAs. (Rich Internet Applications) These are business applications that are developed to operate over the web. Just type in your URL address, login and work. In many ways this is the future (Unless you have a good reason like doing graphics, and video editing.)

As I am developing a application for my company right now, I decided to have a good look at the current state of play.

Currently we have buzz words like AJAX, CSS and FLEX. These terms relate to certain technologies. Following is a brief overview.

An application such as Google Mail, is a AJAX, CSS, Javascript type RIA. In my investigation, I find these implementations get very complex very quickly and are SLOW and buggy over different browsers. I personally feel AJAX, Javascript applications are extremely limited and can only archive limited functionality with complex development paths. This makes them expensive to develop and buggy.

FLEX is a RIA development platform based on Flash. FLEX is FlashPlayer based websites that are designed specifically for Application use. Flash (6,7,MX,CS3) has been forced into doing RIA by some hard core Flash users, but it was not terribly efficient. FLEX is designed specifically for this. Prototyping applications in FLEX is very fast. The new Actionscript3 is a great language and is now more strict in syntax. This leads to better and more maintainable code. Plus it is many times faster then Actionscript2, and as such, 100 time faster then Javascript. In real terms, it looks much more like a traditional application in that it runs in a window of set size and does not run over the page fold as most AJAX/Javascript RIAs do.

Still, an RIA needs more then a good interface builder. It needs backend.

Recently Adobe released “LiveCycle Data Services ES Express“. LCDS for short. This is a free version and has most likely appeared because amfphp and similar free source projects have been becoming extremely popular. LCDS is the latest release of what was once called FDS or Flash Data Services. It is cut down and cannot be used in Clustering or other enterprise applications. However, many developers do not need this. NOTE: This software was, until now, EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE to use. In the facinity for $10,000 for the full blown system. Ie per CPU. (Note: prices may be better now, but it was once said amount and more)

LSDS is a Java back end and plugs into all Java enterprise systems like JBoss, Tomcat, WebSphere, etc. It does come with JRun out of the box.

I am quite amazed that this has completely been under the radar. Ad FLEX development and LCDS combination and you have an extremely powerful development platform to build applications of the future. Fast, effective Web interfaces that work much like applications running directly on the computer. Ad Adobe AIR, which lets you turn these web Applications into REAL applications with a build in data synchronization system. This is great stuff.

However, (Here they come), this feels very immature when I played with it in terms if integration and ease of use. Also, the knowledge set is quite wide, (But then again, I like to program backend and front end. Being a reasonable Flex, Actionscript3 coder AND a java coder is a big ask. Plus web developers must haves. PHP, perl and Linux knowledge.)

Finally, to bring all this together Adobe has shows a new technology code named “Thermo” See the video from MAX conference here. This is the killer application that will have Microsoft worried. DOT.NET is a great development environment and perfect for enterprise. However, Thermo brings the DESIGNER into the development team more then thought possible. With Thermo, you can turn Photoshop elements directly into interface components. Then design how they animate and layout on the screen. This is all done with a Photoshop like interface. This gives the Designer more control and also, when handing of to the coder, most of the hard work is already done. Adobe has really thought out of the square here.

Microsoft is not standing still. Silverlight has been rushed out and is a great technology. It is only early days. The RIA implementation is not as mature as FLEX. From what I hear, FLEX leaves it for dead right now. Its also hard to see it offering the Graphic designer integration that Thermo will bring.

The combination of these Adobe technologies (And new price points) , has Adobe in a position to become the dominant application platform for the Web. And as the Web is where most enterprise computing is going. Microsoft has a lot to loose.