The famous (infamous?) Scott Barnes has a good post up over on his MSDN blog about WebORB. Mark came to talk to us about it at the Seattle Flex User group, and I was pretty impressed by what they’ve been able to accomplish. Being in Seattle, I’m hyper-sensitive to how Flex can work with .NET and while you can use WebServices or HTTPService to talk to a .NET backend, remoting is much faster, and if you want to use Flex Data Services, you’re out of luck.
I realize that selling FDS is tough to do, and that right now, most people working with Flex don’t really need the functionality FDS provides. But WebORB is a very well rounded solution for those companies using .NET that want the added features. The fact that it has some Flash Media Server functionality baked in is just icing on the cake. Their dashboard is also a HUGE benefit to developers. They have code generation for regular AS3 classes, Cairngorm and others. They’ve also got a Service Capture like feature that lets you inspect what is being sent to and from WebORB. When you combine all this with the fact that you can use WebORB and MSMQ to sync up Flex with other .NET applications, it just looks even better.
If you’re using .NET and Flex, I suggest you take a look at WebORB. You may not need FDS right now, but if you ever do, this is a great way to do it. I can’t wait for FDS to take off because I think it enables a new model for the web and takes it to the next level. We’re not quite there yet, but I can see it coming.
[tags]WebOrb, Flex, .net[/tags]
TweetRelated posts: