Chapter 14. Using Client-Side Data Integration

Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 provides new data components to connect with datasources as well as manage that data in the Flash Player. This data management enables the creation of true client/server systems with a significant client-side data layer. Because we are using the Flash Player, we still have all the advantages of the Internet. The best part is that Flash developers no longer have to build their own data management tools to manage data in the Flash Player.

Specifically, Flash MX Professional 2004 provides tools that manage the following:

• Connecting to data sources

• Translating external data into Flash data

• Editing data

• Sorting data

• Filtering data

• Saving changes to data

Flash MX Professional 2004 provides a robust model for creating client/server systems. One of the main advantages is that using the Flash Player to manage data enables a clean separation between the client and the server sides. If we use this effectively, we can greatly reduce the server load by performing many functions on the client side. In other versions of Flash, developers had to hard-wire all this functionality themselves . In Flash MX Professional 2004, Macromedia has built all this data management directly into the authoring tool, allowing for the best possible performance.

There are two ways of linking the different pieces of a Flash application together: Visual data binding and ActionScript 2.0. This chapter will cover both ways of linking components, but will focus on using ActionScript 2.0 because ActionScript 2.0 will ultimately result in a more maintainable system that will be easier to customize and manage. Using data binding does not enable access to the actual code generated; it can be changed only in the Visual Properties Inspector.