Simple Database connectivity with Flex?

[keith_hughitt]

Hello all,



I am new to Flex, and was hoping someone might be able to
help point me in the right direction. I have been reading around on
how to connect Flex applications to a database backend, but I'm
still not clear on how it is normally done. Is this possible using
only the standalone free Flex SDK? Or do you have to use additional
software (e.g. Flex data services)? Can it be done without using
any of the proprietary software?



Any advice would be very much appreciated.



Thanks,

Keith

[emesol0]

I think you will need to install flex data services; make a
Java project using flex builder; then create an
<mx:remoteObject> object which will interact with ordinary
Java classes that do all the database connectivity issue.

[chris_huston_t1]

Flex Data Services is not necessary for connecting to a
database. You can use HTTPService calls to PHP or other scripting
language such as .net to connect to a database of your choice. You
can also use remoting with AMFPHP which is free and quite easy and
efficient to work with. I use Flex/PHP/MySql all the time and they
work great together.



Vygo

[keith_hughitt]

Thanks you both for the advice. Do you think you might be
able to explain

what the difference between using HTTPService calls to PHP
vs. Remoting with AMFPHP?

Also, will it ever be possible to handle database
connectivity using just the Flex SDK? E.g. something

like the mysql_connect function for PHP. I'm sure there is a
reason why it's not feasible to have something like that right now,
but I haven't come across any discussion on the topic. Thanks again
for the feedback.



Take care,

Keith

[sthzg]

Hi Keith,



I think the reason Flex doesn't have it's own 'mysql_connect'
is that *.SWFs are executed on the clients computer. The DBMS is
running on a server - for example at your webhost. Access to the
DBMS is most of the time restricted to localhost or certain trusted
IPs or domains (security) and furthermore the client running your
application would have to have a database-driver installed to
communicate with the DB-server.



As far as I understand, those are (at least some of ?) the
reasons why client-side scripting-languages like javascript and
flash cannot provide direct connection to DBMS.

[chris_huston_t1]

HTTPService calls send and receive data in String format,
often as XML. Remoting uses the AMF3 format which is binary and
thus much more compact for large data sets. If you are just
transmitting a few records from you DB, then you probably won't
notice a difference between the two approaches. In terms of
programming, remoting is generally more efficient since you can
send value objects and database results directly back to Flex and
use the result without having to convert it since AMFPHP takes care
of all the serialization for you. This speeds up development for
me. However, if you are worried about having to install AMFPHP on
the server, then HTTPService is a more generic way to go. AMFPHP is
quite easy to setup, though.



Vygo