Granite Data Services (Flex & Java EE)

Granite Data Services (GraniteDS or GDS) is a free, open source, (LGPL'd) alternative to Adobe® LiveCycle® (Flex™ 2+) Data Services for Java EE application servers. The primary goal of this project is to provide a framework for Flex 3+/EJB 3/Seam/Spring/Guice/POJO application development with full AMF3/RemoteObject benefits.

It also features a Comet-like data push implementation (AMF3 requests sent over HTTP) and ActionScript3 code generation tools (Ant task and Eclipse builder).

Dedicated service factories are available for:

EJB 3 (session beans that return entity beans),
Seam (with identity security and conversation/task support),
Spring (with Acegi/Spring security and entity beans support),
Guice/Warp (with entity beans support),
Simple Java™ classes (aka POJO) interactions.

GDS is designed to be lightweight, robust, fast, and highly configurable.

Features Stack

Main Features (Stable, Experimental, or Planned)

GraniteDS is in constant evolution and these features are only informative.

Stable

General

Full RemoteObject & AMF3 Support. See GDS AMF3 documentation.
Data Push (Gravity). A Comet-like implementation with AMF3 data long-polling over HTTP (consumer/producer based architecture). See documentation on Data Push (Gravity).
Tide. A client-side entity cache and contextual framework that acts as a services frontend (all server calls/events are managed by this central component). See documentation on Tide.

Services

EJB 3 services (Stateless & Stateful session beans). See EJB 3 Services.
Seam Integration. A reliable Seam integration with full scopes (eg. conversation) support. See documentation on Seam Services.
Spring integration. A reliable Spring integration with Acegi/Spring security services. See documentation on Spring Services.
Guice/Warp Integration. A reliable Guice integration with Wideplay Warp persistence support. See documentation on Guice Services.
POJO Services (remote calls to simple Java classes that expose public methods). See POJO Services.

JPA Support (with lazy-initialization support)

Hibernate support. See Externalizers and Lazy Initialization.
TopLink/EclipseLink support.
OpenJPA support.
DataNucleus support.

Application Servers

JBoss support with bundled Tomcat or Jetty servlet containers (standalone Tomcat or Jetty servers are also fully supported).
WebLogic support.
GlassFish support. GDS applications may now be deployed in the GlassFish application server with full security support.
OSGi support.

Code Generation & Compiler

EJB 3 entity bean to ActionScript 3 classes code generator (Gas3). See AS3 Generation.
Granite Eclipse Builder. An Eclipse plugin which automates the generation of AS3 entities from the Java classes. See AS3 Generation.
Granite Web Compiler. This compiler may be deployed in your servlet container and will build your MXML and ActionScript3 source code on the fly.

Experimental

Servlet 3.0 support (async and Comet).

Planned

A set of Flex components suitable for complex data structures.
GDS Console. An administration console to manage the GDS services.

Blogs, Articles & Interviews

Some known resources:

Eric Daugherty Blog Post (Jan 22, 2010): "Getting Started with GraniteDS, Spring, and Maven".
Eric Daugherty Blog Post (Jan 21, 2010): "Flex, Adobe, and alternatives to LCDS and Flash Builder".
O'Reilly Article (William Draï - Jan 19, 2010): "Getting Free with GraniteDS", with a step-by-step comparison between new features of LCDS 3 and GraniteDS 2.1.
JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog Post (Alexander Doroshko - November 30th, 2009): "GraniteDS Projects with IntelliJ IDEA 9".
Flex Junk Blog Post (Andrew Westberg - Nov 16, 2009): "Integrating GraniteDS, ActiveMQ, and Tomcat".
InfoQ Article (Craig Wickesser - Jun 27, 2009): "GraniteDS Continues to Evolve", about the GraniteDS 2.0 release.
Javalobby Article (Franck Wolff - Jan 9, 2009): "Migrating Java EE Web Applications to Adobe Flex and Granite Data Services."
InfoQ Interview (Franck Wolff - Oct 20, 2008).
Mind the Flex Article (sven- and Martin - July 7th, 2008): "Securing your Flex application with Spring Security and Active Directory" that uses GraniteDS/Spring integration.
Javalobby Article (William Draï - Jun 11, 2008): "Flex for J2EE Developers: The Case for Granite Data Services."
InfoQ Interview (Franck Wolff - Feb 5, 2008).
A quick introduction to GraniteDS/Seam integration on Seam Framework site.
Cameron Ingram's blog, mostly on GraniteDS/Seam integration.
TheServerSide article by Cameron Ingram.
"Java/Flex Excellent RIA Technologies Combination" on The Server Side about an ERP solution called Kinetik and based on GraniteDS.
"Getting Started Project - GraniteDS with Spring, Hibernate and Cairngorm, Part 1" on Everything Whimsical.
"Getting Started Project - GraniteDS with Spring, Hibernate and Cairngorm, Part 2" on Everything Whimsical.
"Getting Started Project - GraniteDS with Spring, Hibernate and Cairngorm, Part 3" on Everything Whimsical.
"Flex with Seam using GraniteDS": A video tutorial about GDS/Tide/Seam on Piotr Walczyszyn's blog.

If you would like to see your article/blog listed here, please email me.

Projects Using GraniteDS

Known projects that use or integrate with GDS:

Free/Open Source Products:

Nuxeo: J2EE Enterprise Content Management that uses GraniteDS for its Flex connector.
JOnAS and JASMINe: J2EE OSGi enterprise server suite with Flex-based administration consoles that use GDS.
Igenko: A Flex-based open source CMS and eCommerce solution that uses GDS.

Commercial Products:

NeoLoad Load Testing Tool: Thanks to its complete GraniteDS framework support, you can create scenarios to test your Flex applications' behavior under stress and validate their performances, while pinpointing any weaknesses.
Kinetik: An ERP solution based on GraniteDS.

If you would like to see your application listed here, please email me.

Links

GraniteDS

Related Resources

Related Projects

Granite Data Services (Flex & Java EE)

Recent News

Overview

Features Stack