Flex/Openlaslzo for RIAs?

Question

I recently stumbled upon flex/openlaszlo (OL). Both seem very useful and I have a few questions about them:

1. What is needed to deploy flex apps? From what I understand, the flex sdk is open source, but the other tools (for development and deployment) are proprietary.

2. What is needed to deploy openlaszlo? Is it completely open source (from development to deployment), or does it have development/deployment "gotchas" like flex?

3. Specifically, I'd like to use flex or openlaszlo to either augment or replace an editable table I created using js, ajax, html, and css. Is this the type of thing flex/OL can/should be used for? Are there any drawbacks or pitfalls to using flex/OL for this rather than straight js, ajax, html, css?

Thanks.

Edit: Are there any licensing (use) restrictions on applications built on flex? i.e. applications built on flex can be for only non-commercial use, unless a commercial license is purchased?

Answer 1

Flex SDK is free, but Flex Builder is not. You can use the free and open source FlashDevelop to write flex apps - it doesn't have drag-n-drop features like flex builder, but it offers code hinting and stuff. I don't know about openlaszlo.

Answer 2

Re: "What is needed to deploy openlaszlo? Is it completely open source (from development to deployment)"

OpenLaszlo is OpenSource, but the typical versions you install come with the main components pre-compiled into a SWF for the SWF run-time. However, you can download the full source code if you wish to look at it and/or compile the core yourself:

Last official released version (4.9.0): http://download.openlaszlo.org/4.9.0/openlaszlo-4.9.0-src.tar.gz

Nightly builds:

http://download.openlaszlo.org/nightly/trunk/ (you will see "source" as an option after you click the link of the version you want)

OpenLaszlo does not require anything else to be deployed but itself, except if your application is compiled to the SWF run-time then the user will need the Adobe Flash player installed in their browser to use it.

Answer 3

The following link has some discussion about openlaszlo and flex, it may help you: Use the best open source client-side framework for cloud computing

Answer 4

1. You do not need anything special to deploy Flex apps. Just put the compile app (a SWF file) on any web server. Flex apps can talk to any back-end.

Answer 5

I'll answer your last question: the biggest drawback to using Flex is that it requires the client to have the Flash Player plugin installed in their browser. Not that big a deal for most people since Flash Player is over 98% of all computers. With the straight Javascript, AJAX, HTML, CSS approach it should work on all browsers, assuming you wrote it correctly.

Answer 6

Below is the link providing details of tools/IDEs for developing OpenLazlo applications http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Development_Tools