Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Flex with Cairngorm 2 - Popups Strategy

This post is a brief summary how we use Cairngorm 2 methodology for popups in Flex applications in the IT shop I work at:

  • Three files are created for each popup:
    • popup view
    • Cairngorm event to initiate showing of the popup
    • Cairngorm command to actually show the popup using PopupManager
  • Any data that needs to be passed to the popup is attached to the event.
  • When user closes the popup, the popup view simply removes itself from PopupManager.
  • The results of the popup, if any, are updated (can be done via data binding) in the ModelLocator, to which other controlls are bound as well, if needed.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Options for Java Middle-Tier of an RIA Application

Choice of Standard/Framework
Here's my best option or two for each area:
  • Persistence:

    • JPA. Use implementation-specific annotations only where unavoidable, and mark them in a way that will allow you to find all of them easily.
     
  • Transaction Management: EJB 3.1
  • Dependency Injection: EJB 3.1
  • Security: EJB 3.1
  • Exposing required web services:EJB 3.1
  • AOP: EJB 3.1 if their support for AOP is sufficient for you. Otherwise: Spring
  • Other:

    • Singletons: EJB 3.1
Providers
  • JPA: I use Hibernate, but the whole advantage of JPA is, that which provider you use is much less important than it used to be.
  • Application Server: Glassfish 3. It does support EJB 3.1.