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Adobe and Salesforce collaborate on Flash Builder


By David Worthington
November 6, 2009 — 
Adobe Systems and Salesforce have delivered a preview edition of Flash Builder for Force.com, a tool set that was jointly designed to make it easier for developers to add AIR and Flash interfaces to Force.com applications.

"People have been able to use the products together, but it was not as easy as they want it to be," said Eric Stahl, director of product marketing at Salesforce. Some scenarios that Flash Builder enables are data visualization for Force.com business applications, cloud-based rich Internet applications, and desktop synchronization for occasionally connected applications.

"Developers have been building Flash interfaces for Force.com applications for some time," said senior Gartner Research analyst Eric Knipp. "The partnership makes sense for both companies, and it will make it easier for developers to build Force.com back ends fronted with Flash-based RIAs."

Flash Builder provides an Eclipse-based environment that has plug-ins for Adobe platforms and Force.com. Developers start new projects by importing their Salesforce WSDL to access Force.com APIs, Stahl explained. "The tool logs into Force.com, and pulls objects and components into the tool as if they were a local resource."

Low-level AIR plumbing is provided to do the "heavy lifting" for desktop data synchronization, he added. "[Data synchronization] was not trivial before. Now it is fast and easy."

Many Force.com applications can be created without any knowledge of Apex code, Stahl said. Apex is a proprietary language that is used for developing applications on the Salesforce platform. "Workflow rules, e-mail alerts and approvals can be created with a point, click and drag interface," he said.

However, Stahl said that it is necessary for developers to learn Apex in order to implement business logic off the client and on the server-side back end.

"In a sense, the combined Flash/Force.com platform represents the evolution of next-generation client-server architecture," said Knipp.

"The back-end 'server' in this case is the scalable Force.com platform, while the client is developed in Flash. With Adobe AIR, developers can take advantage of local storage and computing services and now integrate with Force.com for data synchronization."

The Adobe/Salesforce partnership could pave the way for other companies, such as Microsoft, to create their own “RIA in the cloud” solution, Knipp added. With Azure and Silverlight, Microsoft has the capability to deliver such a solution by itself.

With Silverlight 3, Microsoft delivered the capability for Silverlight applications to run on the desktop. Microsoft has also announced that it will be hosting Silverlight applications and media streaming on Azure.

"Salesforce will have a vested interest in providing the same capabilities to Silverlight developers if a 'critical mass' becomes interested in the Force.com platform," said Knipp. "Microsoft could also encourage such a partnership with funding, if it wanted to."

The final version of Adobe Flash Builder will become available in early 2010; packaging and pricing will be announced at that time.


Related Search Term(s): Adobe, Flash, Salesforce


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