O’Reilly: Inside RIA

In the previous article, I gave an introduction to SQLite and its place inside or AIR. In this tutorial, I will be explaining the code needed to connect to and query a previously existing SQLite database. This will take two articles to accomplish this, so this article will focus on learning the basic classes and methods that you will need to know. The next tutorial will contain a sample application that implements these features.

One of the most powerful features in Adobe AIR is the native integration of SQLite that was introduced in Beta 2. Since Beta 2 it's integration has been improved, and it is now a viable local database capable of storing application data or syncing with a database server. The implementation provided with AIR is powerful and provides two distinctly different ways to access the database. There are nineteen different classes that can be used with this API, and in the next few articles I will dissect the ones that you need to know.

There still seems to be a battle to be had about the future of computing in the browser vs. on the desktop. With a little bit of terminology change, and a slightly different perspective, it becomes clear that these two environments for running software are co-evolving, not competing for attention.

If you are a Flex developer, and you haven't checked out Degrafa yet, you should. Degrafa is an open source declarative graphics framework for Flex. It allows you to easily create complex shapes, patterns, skins, gradients, strokes, etc... without intimate knowledge of the drawing API. The framework allows you to do some really cool things, without a lot of code. Here's a quick example of what can be done with a Flex datagrid, Degrafa, and some time to kill.

I just got back from the AjaxWorld conference in New York last week. Here's my wrap up notes and thoughts on the event. On the whole it seemed very well attended and had some interesting and very packed sessions.

The AJAX UI Toolkits wiki at http://ajax.wikia.com identifies a list of UI components most commonly used in business software applications to develop a rich Internet application user experience. Developers and technology decision makers can use the wiki to benchmark which AJAX toolkits meet their specific requirements at the level of user experience.

Everyone wants their Flex application to perform well. We each want ours to be fast, with minimal wait times, and want it to run as seamlessly as possible. Well, one of the most important factors in getting this kind of response is the structure of your data model, and the results of your data services.

I have been thinking about the current state of the "View Source" option that the web has so radically benefited from. With the Flash Player and it's radical success over the last ten years, it may be time to ask why we are so ready to part with the "View Source" command that we have become used to in the browser. For years we have all been focused on our creations in Flash, so stunning, and compelling has the work been that it's need to be freely available to the masses as source has certainly fallen to the wayside.

In order for software to be useful, it needs to be able to react to its environment. Put another way, a program needs to have logic. The logic of an application gives it the ability to change course when a given condition is met. Program flow in ActionScript 3.0 is controlled by conditionals and loops. Both conditionals and loops are responsible for determining whether a particular code block is executed, and are therefore placed within a method body. The main difference between the two is that conditionals decide on executing one collection of statements over another, and loops allow a collection of statements to execute over and over. As we'll soon see, loops, like many things in object-oriented programming, are great tools that provide the very important element of scalability. But first, a bit about conditionals.

My last few posts on the Flash/Flex/ActionScript drawing API gave me a few ideas... Everyone always says how it reminds them of old-school programming in BASIC or Pascal. I decided to make it easier for anyone to play with the drawing API, without having to compile any programs for themselves. I call this the "Drawing API Explorer". Using the drawing API explorer application, you don't have to override updateDisplayList or anything. All of the hard work is done.