Found Census – great site which allows comparison between various data loading mechanisms for RIAs. Seems like Flex/AMF3 has a big advantage both in exec time and bandwidth:
And, related to my previous post, here is a demo explaining how to setup BlazeDS and Flex in IntelliJ IDEA, including debugging both the client and the server side – nice!
I never got around giving Flex a serious try.
The most interesting features, like the Live Cycle Data Services, allowing server push-based RIAs, are very expensive, and I did not had the need for anything else that I could not handle using some simple (Y)UI thrown together and hooked into a DB using Grails.
Now, the current implementation of our Atlantis backend polls every n seconds from the server and new messages are added, via AJAX. This led to some browser stability problems and a general bottleneck if several AJAX-”windows” are opened and each of them refreshed every n seconds, respectively.
Affter some research, I stumbled across BlazeDS, which might solve this problem – another part of Adobe technology that was released open source, and should provide the basic functionality needed to access hibernated Java objects from Flex, plus allowing push subscriptions and notifications from the server to the client.
I will check out this tutorial about getting Flex, BlazeDS and Hibernate to work together.
Also, there is a great post about the differences of the various flavors and licensing details, as well as another one.
I will post my findings here.
I worked with Alex Champandard during my time at Rockstar Vienna.
He launched his site AiGameDev.com a while ago, and is now re-opening the premium section:
We’ll be reopening the Premium Membership Area on Wednesday, May 6th. In the process of relaunching, we’ll fill you in on what’s changing in the world of game AI, show you the techniques and ideas you need to stay on top of, and give you a whole bunch of bonuses and extras from our very best content.
If you are even remotely interested in AI, check it out!