Second Annual Enterprise Flex Symposium Occasionally connected applica7ons with Adobe AIR and BlazeDS and PDF Genera7on on the Client

Transcription

1 Second Annual Enterprise Flex Symposium Occasionally connected applica7ons with Adobe AIR and BlazeDS and PDF Genera7on on the Client August 7, 2009, New York City

2 Adobe Integrated Run7me (AIR) AIR 1.5 is a step toward providing a full plaborm for desktop applicaeon development. AIR offers development and predictable run7me environment for AJAX and Flex developers. To run AIR applicaeons, the user s computer must have AIR runeme installed (about 15MB): htp://get.adobe.com/air.

3 AIR is cool because 1. AIR supports I/O operaeons with user s file system 2. AIR allows you to sign and version applicaeons 3. Updater controls proper upgrades of the apps 4. AIR comes with a local database SQLite to keep the data (in clear or encrypted mode) on the user s PC 5. AIR applicaeons can monitor network conneceons 6. You can run AIR applicaeons when disconnected 7. AIR has beter than Flex support of HTML

4 AIR is not so cool because 1. AIR can t make calls to user s OS 2. AIR can t launch non AIR applicaeons 3. AIR can t instaneate DLLs 4. AIR can t call an AcEveX controls 5. AIR can t directly access ports on user s PC 6. Adobe doesn t offer data synchronizaeon support for apps that use BlazeDS 7. AIR doesn t allow PDF GeneraEon on the client Farata Systems has fixed items 6 and 7

5 PharmaSales Applica7on Every day a dispatcher of Acme Pharma Inc. schedules visits for salesman stored in the corporate database.

6 PharmaSales Applica7on Every morning a salesman starts PharmaSales AIR applicaeon, which connects to the corporate database (MySQL) and automaecally into a local database (SQLite) that exists on salesman s laptop.

7 Architecture of Pharma Sales Client Adobe Air ApplicaEon Server Java Servlet Container Clear.swc Adobe BlazeDS SQLite DBMS Corporate DBMS

8 Uses of local SQLite cache Create an independent desktop applicaeon with its own local database. Allow the AIR applicaeon to remain operaeonal even when there is no network conneceon. Sync the data with the central database when conneceon is available. Offload large chunks of intermediate applicaeon data to lower memory uelizaeon.

9 Liz can see her visits for today Liz doesn t know that her visits were saved in the local database SQLite. Liz doesn t give a damn! She just knows it s safe to disconnect and hit the road.

10 Liz visits a medical office She enters the comments about this visit

11 Liz saves the visit notes locally Please note, we are disconnected.

12 SQLite Manager s data view Local DB is not a copy of the central DB. Only the query results (DTOs) are stored in the local cache.

13 Liz came home late She inserted the network cable in her notebook and started the PharmaSales applicaeon Liz is a litle drunk.she can barely see the buton Sync. Liz clicks on it and falls asleep

14 Clear Toolkit is cool because It supports data sync between the local SQLite database with BlazeDS. The local data are sent to the Acme Pharm central DBMS. This is done by the class OfflineDataCollec7on that comes with clear.swc, a library of Flex components from open source Clear Toolkit htps://sourceforge.net/projects/cleartoolkit/.

15 It s nice to have a map handy

16 Even if you are disconnected

17 PDF Genera7on 1. Use LiveCycle Designer and create PDFs 2. Use Flex for UI integrated with LiveCycle forms on the server 3. Send bitmaps from Flex to LCDS 4. Perform PDF generaeon on the client with Clear Toolkit components or ClearBI

18 PDF Genera7on from bitmaps 1. A client may send a Bytearray (a bitmap) object to the server private funceon generatepdf():void { var snapshot:imagesnapshot = ImageSnapshot.captureImage(balanceSheet); balancesheetimage = ImageSnapshot.encodeImageAsBase64(snapshot); } snapshot = ImageSnapshot.captureImage(earnings); earningsimage = ImageSnapshot.encodeImageAsBase64(snapshot); 2. On the server, you create a Java class that merges the bitmap with an XFA form // define a string with a link to the XFA template String source = FlexContext.getServletContext().getRealPath( /pdfgen/company.xfa ); XFAHelper helper = new XFAHelper(); helper.open(source); // Import XFA dataset : dataset is the XML constructed in your Flex applicaeon. // dataset is a org.w3c.dom.document helper.importdataset(dataset); // Save new PDF as a byte array in the current session byte[] bytes = helper.savetobytearray();

19 Let s add PDF prineng to Pharma Sales ApplicaEon

20 PDF Genera7on on the client 1. Open source library AlivePDF (htp://alivepdf.org/) 2. Flex UI components from Clear Toolkit library (htp:// sourceforge.net/projects/cleartoolkit ), which can expose their state in an XDP format to be used for generaeon PDF.

21 Prin7ng into a local pdf file

22 Generated PDF with header and footer

23 Live Demo of Pharma Sales And Code Walkthrough

24 ClearBI Toolkit will include a Web Reporter ClearBI End User Reference Applications Local Report Files Report Player Control SuperGrid Control Report Designer Control Reporting Metadata Eclipse Plugins for Developers (ClearBI, ClearDataBuilder)

25 Two Faces of ClearBI For Developers Eclipse Plugin : Visual edieng of the report metadata (AIR applicaeon) Persistence to a local drive Repot publishing to a database (End User EdiEon only) For Business Users Web ApplicaEons: Visual edieng of the report metadata Persistence to a database Support of reports and users hierarchies Users need Flash Player, nothing else

26 ClearBI Reference Applica7on

27 ClearBI Report Designer

28 ClearBI Report Designer: the Formula Painter

29 Contact info and useful links Web site: htp:// Flex Blog: htp://flexblog.faratasystems.com Clear Toolkit Framework: htp://sourceforge.net/projects/cleartoolkit/ O Reilly Book Enterprise Development with Flex (rough cuts): htp://my.safaribooksonline.com/ (c) Farata Systems