Seems to work. I’m using the following chain:
- Flash MX 2004 targeting FP6 with AS2
- Plain NetServices.as (haven’t tried J Lott’s update yet)
- AS2 classes registered to Java types
- Deployed to iPAQ 2210
- Requests a service running under Tomcat 5 + OpenAMF 1.0RC5 + ASTranslator 1.5.5 + Hibernate 2.1
- MySQL 4 on the back-end
The bottom line is that it basically works, though the performance of the PPC is much slower than desktop and V2 components are definitely sluggish. Overall, a promising combination.
A few quick notes at this point:
- OpenAMF appears to be very well written, with clear source code and well-considered design
- I’m waiting for some books on Flash Remoting (due today) but my sense is that you have to hunt around for the various pieces of the puzzle on your own unless your design matches an example you can find
- I’m not getting a smooth translation of some object properties via OpenAMF/ASTranslator, specifically a Set (HashedSet) is coming through empty but if I switch to List (ArrayList) it works
- The big question of whether Macromedia will continue to support Remoting in addition to SOAP is a valid one — right now having to mix the old-style NetServices procedural code with AS2 class design is messy, and the whole architecture could really benefit from some clearer framework on the client side
- I haven’t yet tried it, but there’s some interesting work being done on generating AS2 classes from UML in addition to the server-side Java classes. If your classes are basically value objects, this makes sense to me, but it’s like that the way they’re used will differ greatly on client and server so the same methods really aren’t going to be wanted in both places
More as I learn…