Christoph Rooms

The Benelux Presales team is starting from June on with the “dr Flex & dr LiveCycle” events. The idea is to be available 1 day a month for general questions on Adobe LiveCycle ES and Adobe Flex. It’s not about answering typical support questions, but to give advice on general questions like how to implement Adobe LiveCycle and Flex into an enterprise architecture.  

“During these sessions “Dr Flex & Dr LiveCycle”, observe your common Flex & LC symptoms. They advise on how to implement Adobe Enterprise Software and work in a healthy IT environment by giving you a FREE ‘health check’ session.” 

They also setup a blog where they will post all questions and answers so the community can benefit from this iniative ! Check it out : http://www.drflex.eu

This releases has got some great improvements on performance of the messaging platform and now support Flex 3 SDK and Flex 3 Builder … You’ll notice the SDK isn’t any longer default installed at the server side … which is a good thing. Best practice should be anyway that you compile the swf on the client. 

You can see a list of new features + download at Adobe Labs.  

The prerelease of the new version of the LC ES is available on the LiveCycle developer center. One of the most impressive new features is that you can now debug your processes by using record and playback. It allows you to run through a recorded process step by step,  and evaluate process variabeles for each step … Huge improvement !

It’s that time of the year again ! Javapolis is up in 4 weeks and Adobe will be attending again ! The exiting news is that one of the keynotes will discuss the use of Flex with Java. Besides that you can see Flex/AIR in a universtity session, a conference session, 2 quickies and 1 BOF session.

We’ll also have some Flex specialist at Adobe booth : James Ward, Christophe Coenraets, Marc Meewis and me. We also have invited Bruce Eckel to talk about his view on Flex and Java.

Ofcourse we’ll also try to have some fun by organizing the “Adobe Quest” … A cool way to get your hands on some cool Adobe gadgets … More on this later on …

And … just like last year I have 2 full conference passes to give away … How to win ? Post a comment to this item and tell me why you think Java and Flex/AIR are the perfect couple … The 2 most original posts will win a conference pass.

See you at Javapolis ? I’m looking forward to it !

Persons that did attend the Bootcamp session at Max probably have seen this component. It’s a Livecycle ES component that will allow you to upload a file to your Adobe Share account.

So Livecycle ES has got an orchestration tool that allows you to build functionality by linking ”services” together. Each services stands for a specific piece of functionality. The product comes with a library of these services. (Generate PDF, Secure PDF, Read LDAP info, Send email, SQL, …) Livecycle ES Workbench, a tool build on top of eclipse, allows you to draw the orchestration in and configure it.  

By building a custom components you can extend the Livecycle ES functionality by creating your own services. A custom component is a Jar file that excist out of a java object, a configuration file and an icon which defines the visual representation in the Workbench. I have created the LC ES Share component, by building a java object that would call the Share Java API.
After writing the component, the component developer would hand over the Jar file to the Livecycle ES administrator so it can be deployed into the Livecycle ES platform. After deployement, it will become available as a service and will be visible in the Workbench. From this moment on you can drag and drop the service into the orchestration you would be building.

The image above shows a sample orchestration. In this orchestration I will first generate a PDF file, then I’ll upload it to Adobe Share and finally I send out an email with the notification. The Generate PDF and the email component are in the LC ES product, the Adobe Share component is the one I have build.

You would configer the Adobe Share component by defining it’s properties in the UI. Check out the screenshot below. The fields I have to define here, are the same as defined in my java object and configured in the xml configuration file.

Another advantage of the Livecycle ES platform is, that from the moment i deploy my Adobe Share component, it will not only become available as a service to my orchestration designer.The service containerr also automatically makes the functionality availabe as a SOAP service, EJB service and a Remoting endpoint. The Remoting endpoint allows you to interact with this piece of functionality from with a Flex application.
You can even add watched folders or email endpoints, to make the Share functionality available when dropping a file in a folder or receiving a file by email. Find more information on the service container in the Livecycle documentation. 

I have made the source available, and also the component which you can deploy directly into your LC ES platform. Find here how to deploy components. You can download Livecycle ES trial version if you don’t have it installed yet.

One nice extra  is that I added an ANT build file to the source,  that will build the java source, create the jar file and deploys it automatically to the Livecycle ES platform as discussed in this post.

Arrived in Barcelona yesterday … First night here wasn’t great fun … Had to finish up one of the presentations i was doing …

The Share guys have released Java and Actionscript API’s. So i guess it’s not going to take a long time now before we get the first  drag and drop Share application I’ll try to make a Livecycle component that connect to share, using the Java API.

Back to Max now … First session done, went pretty well … and had a full room. Let’s go we’ll keep this up ;). I have been taking some pictures with my new camera … I got a Canon Ixus 860 IS and am pretty happy with it … i’ll post some of the Max pictures so you can judge for yourself.

Back to Max now …

At Max Barcelona we will host a Livecycle ES Bootcamp session. In the bootcamp session a number of product specialist and Livecycle developers can share experiences, code samples, best practices, etc … So it’s a great session for every Livecycle developer to get to share and learn together with the community.

The way it’s setup for Barcelona is that a number of Adobe LS ES product specialist will spend the first 1.5  hour presenting a number of topics we’ll prepare. The audience can choose 3 sessions out of a list of 6 sessions … You’ll be able to choose from :

• Integrating Flex with Adobe Livecycle
• Using Events in LC ES Process management
• Customizing LC Workspace
• Building custom components
• End points in LC ES
• Prepopulate a form in LC ES Workspace

The last hour we’ll go into an interactive mode which means we’ll have 2 options …

• Have you guys present stuff you have build on top of LC ES.
• Answering specific “how-to” questions from the audience.

I’m sure this will not only be a great knowledge share opportunity, but also a great way to get to know some of the LC ES specialist in EMEA.

We are looking forward to meet you guys !

So if you are coming to Max Barcelona, prepare yourself for 3 days of great content and networking

Here is a list of some sessions i saw in Chicago and certainly can recommend :

• Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) Security by Lucas Adamski : Great technical session that explains what’s the security model for AIR, but also will give you an insight on the why.
• Flex Roadmap by Ely Greenfield : Get some insight in the Flex teams brains … It was interesting to see what might be the next steps …
• Fifty Reasons Why ActionScript 3 Rocks by Grant Skinner : Very technical but certainly not boring
• Optimizing Search for Rich Internet Applications by Craig Hordlow : A question that pops ups quite a lot … Craig tells you what approach to take, and also will give you background on why to take that approach.

A session which is new for Barcelona is the “Flex/AIR & Java integration for Parleys.com” case study by Stephan Janssen. This one is interesting if you are a Java developer. Stephan is the founder of the Javapolis conference.

I’ll be presenting these 2 sessions :

• Hands On: Building an Application Using LiveCycle ES
• Advanced LiveCycle Data Services for Flex Developers

And also will be hosting the “Livecycle Bootcamp”.

I’m certainly looking forward to meet you all ! Don’t hesitate to ping me or say hello

ps : only 18 registrations away from sold out … so you might need to hurry up if you haven’t subscribed yet

Finally get to write some stuff about the event … the last days really have been crazy ! It was intensive but rewarding Let me give you an overview of what i think are the highlights of Max 2007 Chicago.

• Thermo, the RIA designer tool certainly impressed everybody. Even though it’s created for designers, I think even developers will love Thermo. Check out the screenshots at Adobe Labs.
• Buzzword and Adobe Share : It’s great to see the Saas strategy is getting shape ! Share documents online using Adobe Share, and possible the entry point of all these great services that might come in the future. Buzzword, the text editor build on top of AIR, is probably a great example of such a service.
• CoCoMo : One of my personal favorites ! Flex components that allows you to integrate Acrobat Connect functionality into your own application is just way to cool ! This one is going to be a hit !
• Flex Builder goes Linux !
• LiveCycle developers @ Max : it was impressive to see the growth of LC ES developers attendees. The “Meet the LiveCycle team” session was “sold out” ;).
• The new Adobe Developer website has been announced … Check it out : http://developer.adobe.com
• Pacifica : High quality VOIP with the flash player ! Just imagine how this feature can improve the online shopping experience. Whenever you get stuck, you can talk to a representative just by clicking 1 button …

At the moment i’m in the airport of Chicago, going to Ottawa. Next week you’ll find me at Max Barcelona … Will post later this week with some of the must see sessions for Barcelona !

As mentioned already in this blog, Adobe Max is coming up ! Registration is open now so go and get registered !

There will be a number of different sessions on Livecycle, but the one session i need your help on is the Livecycle Bootcamp session. In the Bootcamp session a number of product specialist and Livecycle developers can share experiences, code samples, best practices, etc …

If you are planning to come to this session, post your questions as a comment to this blog item if you want to get them answered during this session … If you have some code or a best practice you would like to share with other developers … ofcourse you are also more then welcome !

You can find more info here.