What is Adobe Flex?

Adobe Flex is an open source application framework which provides powerful tools to build traditional applications for a various browsers, mobile, and desktop with the help of standardized model, tool, and codebase. ADOBE FLEX SDK (Software Development Kit) contains the Adobe Flex class library (ActionScript classes), the Adobe Flex compilers, the debugger, the MXML and ActionScript programming languages, and other utilities to build expressive and interactive rich internet applications (RIA).

Characteristics of Adobe Flex

• Adobe Flex takes care of the user interface (UI) or the client-side functionality of a web application. Server-side functionality dependent on server-side components are written in a traditional scripting language (Java/ PHP etc.)
• An Adobe Flex based application actually delivered as an SWF file and it closely resembles the HTML / Javascript portion of a traditional web application
• Adobe Flex application is deployed as SWF file(s) plus an HTML wrapper, the CSS file(s) and any server-side script files (i.e. Java, .CFM, .PHP, etc) to the server. Like traditional web applications
• These resources are delivered from the server to the client browser using the customary HTTP request / response fashion and Flash Player run the application in the browser

What are the advantages of Adobe Flex?

• Apps created using Adobe Flex are based on Flash Player and are capable of accessing various device capabilities such as GPS, camera, local database, graphics accelerometer
• Adobe Flex apps are compatible with mobile and tablet operating systems like Android, BlackBerry, and iOS
• We can run the Adobe Flex applications either on Web Browsers or desktop
• Adobe Flex applications are platform independent. UI can be native to a platform or can be made same on each platform.
• Adobe Flex applications can interact with a server with all major server side technologies like Java, Spring, Hibernate, PHP, Ruby,NET, Adobe ColdFusion, and SAP using industry standards such as REST, SOAP, JSON, JMS, and AMF.
• Adobe Flex Applications developed assures Rich User Experience through intuitive interaction with the application and presenting information in a visually richer interface.
• Adobe Flex application is a single page application where states can transition from one state to another state without having to fetch a new page from the server or to refresh the browser.
• Adobe Flex application reduces the load on the server to a great extent because it is only required return the application once, rather than a new page every time when the user changes views.

Drawbacks of using Adobe Flex

• Adobe Flex provides an asynchronous programming model to mitigate the Adobe Flex applications which are often single threaded.
• Adobe Flex is ActionScript and XML based. Learning of these two is a must to work in Adobe Flex.