How to be rich with Smalltalk - Intregrating RIA & Smalltalk

Jorge Silva

Abstract

Nowadays, more applications are oriented to RIA interface solutions. RIA (Rich Internet Applications) is a new kind of application with more advantages than traditional applications. It emerges as a combination of features offered by web applications and desktop applications. Even multimedia capabilities are covered because theese enviroments have internal players, and operating system players are not hended.

RIA is a new concept that is growing with the advent of Adobe’s product Flex, Flash, OpenLaszlo and the Ajax platform.

The goal of this presentation is to show by example the way to integrate a pure Smalltalk backend with a flexible frontend made with Flex, using web services. In this way we:

  • Obtain Smalltalk capabilities to model my business domain
  • Give my application a rich and appealing interface in short time, with many problems already solved.

With this integration we look for best domain modelling techniques with Smalltalk, as reflective capabilities, dynamic typing and, in the other hand, to get the best communicative interface as RIA.

Finally, integrating in this manner is a perfect complement when developing applications not only web but destop too, because you give the final product a unique dynamism thank to Smalltalk and a rich, friendly and interactive interface as Flex (o more generally RIA).

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwk5eLXpoLA