1.2. Why this Project

 Documentation Summary

 Page Summary

At this time, RIA developments may be based on AJAX (basically a DHTML + HttpRequest framework), XAML/Silverlight (from Microsoft), JavaFX (from Sun) or Flash technologies (Flex 2+ or Lazlo). AJAX frameworks are very dependent on browser implementations (every WEB developper have experienced the infamous "your application doesn't work with BlahBrowser version XX"). XAML/Silverlight is not cross-platform, is expensive (you need a full .NET developer station and server) and requires Windows Vista (or a huge upgrade of XP). JavaFX is a promising but emerging technology and relies on a client JDK plugin. On the other hand, Flash based applications rely on the Flash browser plugin technology, so the advantage is not immediately obvious. There are still some very strong arguments in favor of this plugin dependence:

• It is easier to convince individuals and organizations to upgrade a plugin rather than an entire browser.
• Flash is widely adopted and the upgrade process is fast and easy.
• Flash (at least version 9) is truly cross-platform and renders contents exactly the same on Windows/Apple/Linux computers.
• Flex 2+ comes with a very rich set of components, is mature (based on previous versions from Macromedia), extensible and very fast.
• Flex 3 is (or will be soon) open source.
• Flash based applications allow you to draw anything you want in a canvas (points, lines, charts, etc.) XAML/Silverlight or JavaFX can do that, but AJAX applications need either an additional plugin (SVG for example with IE) or a server-side image generation.
   

Granite Data Services gives you a free developpment environment to deploy Flex 2+ applications in an Ejb3, Seam, Spring, Guice or Pojo server server (like a full JBoss/Hibernate application server or simply a Tomcat or Jetty servlet container).