Dec 03 2003
Are you aware that SOAP is not Flash Player 7 only?
In an internal email conversation Paul Gubbay – the man behind many data related features in Flash MX 2004 – explained to me that support for the SOAP protocol is not a Flash Player 7 only feature. I was not aware of this and I wonder how many of you are?
Of course, the documents mention clearly that all WebService related classes are available in Flash Player 6 version 79 and above. For some reason, I have completely overseen this and always thought that it was a player 7 specific feature. However, the ability to serialize SOAP messages is not implemented in the Player. It is implemented using ActionScript (which seems to be another reason why Remoting is faster than SOAP).
6 responses so far
OMG you’re kidding. Billy from redmond has been toting the whole web services thing for a while now, and web services use SOAP as their protocol. .NET, ColdFusion, Java, everybody is into web services all of a sudden.
Another big reason why SOAP is slower than Remoting, which is native to Flash, is because of bandwidth. SOAP is a verbose XML format, but Remoting is quick little binary packets.
PS, your comment form is broken because you disabled the subscribe select box.
Good to know, I’m not very keen on SOAP webservices support for Flash in its current incarnation myself.
MM has some great inhouse technology called Flash Remoting and to be frank it far outweighs using the webservices classes. In my view, webservices has always been a great approach for getting access to remote data and that is just the thing that Flash doesn’t promote. For one thing you’ve got the sandbox limitations which require an xml policy file to be hosted and maintained by the webservice provider (or build your own local webservice that acts as a proxy but there goes your usability).
Webservices certainly has a great buzzword value and it no doubt sounds very attractive to business managers but on the other hand you see the opensource remoting solutions taking off tremendously. I don’t really think its just a question of pricing, the whole RIA approach seems to shift to enterprise solutions and the middle-ground doesn’t really get covered that well.
Oh well, sorry for the rant … just my 0.02 Eurocents 😉
Wasn’t Paul Gubbay CEO of Cybersage … the FireFly aka Data Connection Kit people?
Yes, Peter, same guy. 🙂
Yes, Peter, same guy. 🙂
Vera,
The green wizard from behind the curtain has been pushing the Web Services buttons and pulling out the plug on Flash Remoting. Sorry, but I knew there was new and alien blood effecting decisions, waving the Web Services banner within Macromedia. May he be shot with many binary AMF packets
Vera,
The green wizard from behind the curtain has been pushing the Web Services buttons and pulling out the plug on Flash Remoting. Sorry, but I knew there was new and alien blood effecting decisions, waving the Web Services banner within Macromedia. May he be shot with many binary AMF packets