Jun 18 2008
What is the preferred LiveCycle Data Services development environment
Disease :
What would be the best development environment if I want to start developing a Flex applications that uses LiveCycle ES Data Services, so I can interact with a database or any other backend system ?
Prescription :
You will need these components :
- Flex Builder (full version or plugin) : You will use the Flex Builder plugin to build and debug your Flex application (MXML/Actionscript).
- Apache Tomcat (or any other J2EE server) : LiveCycle Data Services is a J2EE Web component (WAR), so you need a J2EE web container to run LiveCycle ES DataServices. You’ll need to add “Java Open Transaction Manager” to Tomcat, to make sure Data Management can handle your database transactions.
- Eclipse WTC plugin : This plugin extends the Eclipse platform with tools for developing Web and Java EE applications.
- LiveCycle Data Services (get your trial version at adobe.com)
All these components are available for Windows and Mac. So you can set up this environment on both operating systems.
For setting up these components there are 2 approaches :
- Install Eclipse and add Flex Builder as a plugin. In this case you probably want to start off with the Eclipse “Europa” version. The Eclipse Europa build is is a coordinated release of different Eclipse project teams. This release will contain extra components, like WTC, that will make development easier.
- Install Flex Builder and add the WTC plugin.
Mihae Corlan has described the second option. In his post you can also find how to create a combined Flex/J2EE project and how to add the Tomcat installation. (which is applicable to both approaches ofcourse )
Mihae also added a post on how debugging works in a Flex/J2EE project.
So now you are ready to build your Flex data rich application that will use LiveCycle Data Services. You will be able to edit the Flex Data Services configuration XML files in Eclipse, write your Assemblers, etc … Every modification will be picked up and automatically deployed.
Tips to stay healthy :
When building data intensive RIA applications with intensive use of CRUD operations, use LiveCycle Data Services data management functionality. It will save you loads of development time and minimize the number of code that has to be written. This will benefit the readability and maintenance of your code and it provides you extra functionality like support for database transactions.
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