FlexLive.net

The LiveCycle Data Service ES, formerly known as the Flex Data Service, now includes an express edition free of charge. Under the license agreement, you are free to use the Data Service ES Express in a production environment, with unlimited number of connections. The only limitation is that you can only run it on a single CPU, which is sufficient for most small to medium sized projects. Here is the direct link to the download page. After you have it installed, be sure to check out the offline message queuing, automation API, and the PDF generation features.

Just this morning, Adobe unveiled LiveCycle ES, the next generation enterprise document and process management platform. The ES release is a major upgrade with countless number of new features with the underlying theme of “user engagement”.

Flex is very much embedded in the ES release. Workspace, formerly known as Form Manager, is re-written from ground up using Flex. Not to be out done, Form Designer can now generate Flex code based on PDF forms. The new unified SOA architecture makes it easier than ever to build custom RIA for LiveCycle. In fact, the new Workspace can now render and exchange data with custom Flex applications with just a few clicks.

Aside from the user experience improvements, the ES release also paid special attentions to the developers. All the LiveCycle development tools are now consolidated into a single Eclipse based IDE. The development environment is integrated with the server side to provide version control and team collaboration support. It’s just a matter of time before people start building third party LiveCycle tools as Eclipse plugins.

Can’t wait to get your hands on the new LiveCycle ES? Head over the devnet and grab the preview release.

The first preview release of LiveCycle ”next generation” is available for download on devnet. The package is about 2 Gbs, but it’s well worth the bandwidth if you want to see the next gen enterprise solution in action:

• Finally, SOA Done Right: The LiveCycle suite used to have separate servers catering to a specific job such as form rendering or policy control. As the LiveCycle family grew, it became a multi-headed beast that was difficult to install and maintain. The new preview release consolidates the individual server products into services running in a common container. The result is dramatic improvements in maintenance and a much cleaner API
• Eclipse-based IDE: The form designer and workflow process designer have been consolidated into a single IDE called the Workbench. Just like the Flex Builder, Livecycle Workbench is based on the Eclipse platform. The IDE is not only a lot more efficient at designing forms and workflows, but it also provide version control and team collaboration support.
• Flex and Form Designer Integration: Is your PDF form too bland? Why not spice it up with a Flex wizard? Designer now comes with a new tool called the Guide Builder that allows you to attach Flex based wizard to your PDF forms. This feature actually makes boring forms fun and aesthetically pleasing. I’ll cover it in a web cast in the near future so you can see it in action.
• More Flex Integration: Formally known as the Form Manager, LiveCycle Workspace is a web portal where the users participate in workflows. It has been completely rebuilt using Flex. The new interface is very slick and the MXML code is available for customization.

As you can see, the new preview release packs more than just incremental improvements. It’s a solid package that pushes the envelope of enterprise RIA. Stay tuned for web casts showcasing the cool new features.

As promised, here is a brand new tutorial on Livecycle Designer. Acrobat and Designer both have native support for SOAP, perfect for your typical enterprise SOA infrastructure. This tutorial shows you how easy it is to consume web services from a PDF form.

P.S., Captivate refused to record my voice narration when running in Vista. I put some captions in there to guide you through, but you have to read fast

Update: Stefan just posted a tutorial on PDF web service as well. Great minds think alike.

A few years back, while working as an intern for a large corporation, which shall remain anonymous, my responsibility was to maintain a slew of internal tools for HR and operations. Most of these tools were built by interns and contractors over the years with PHP or ASP. While PHP and ASP are immensely powerful, I found most of these internal tools were over engineered. Knowing what I know now, I believe a little PDF scripting would be ideal development platform for internal tools. Here are the top five reasons:

1. Distributed architecture. Acrobat has a full blown JavaScript engine that outstrips most browsers. It allows you to manipulate the form appearance, perform data validation, or even interact with web services and databases natively. With Acrobat being one of the most widely installed applications in the enterprise, it’s a true AJAX platform without the cross-browser compatibility issues.
2. Offline capability. The beauty of the PDF platform is that everything is document oriented, which means you can take it offline, make duplications, email it around, or even print it. The document is a self contained application that can be taken anywhere on any OS.
3. Paper integration. We’ve been pushing paperless office for years, but the fact of matter is that it would take decades to completely phase out paper records. In the meantime, LiveCycle Designer allows you to take any paper form and turn it into a form oriented application with a few lines of scripts.
4. Security considerations. Acrobat and LiveCycle both provide policy control for PDF documents. It’s drop dead easy compare to writing your own policy control mechanisms with PHP. PDF also has native support for digital signatures, which is light years ahead of the password systems used in most web applications.
5. Management buy-in. The PDF platform has a very strong brand loyalty from the enterprise decision makers. It’s perceived by many as one of the most secure and stable platforms. With PDF, you can focus on building your solution instead spending time justifying your platform choice to your boss.

In the next few weeks, I’ll start posting tutorials on PDF scripting. Stefan Cameron has a tutorial on PDF database connection capabilities. Be sure to check it out. If you are looking for a place to start, Alex Mitchell also has a great introductory tutorial.

Ensemble has done a really good job bridging Livecycle Designer with Visual Studio with this cool plugin. For those who haven’t heard of Ensemble, it’s a consulting company based in BC. They have built many cool demos using Flex and Livecycle. You can catch a few of their presentations at the Livecycle Developer Week.

Looking back to 2006, it’s hard to miss the drama between Microsoft and Google. From the business analyst point of view, the two make unlikely competitors. Considering the fact that Google’s core business is online marketing, and Microsoft’s core strength is platform building, the level of friction between the two border lines stupidity.

If I was Ray Ozzie, I would be more concerned with Adobe. Why? Because Microsoft’s corporate color is blue, and Adobe is red. Red and blue make natural enemies… But seriously, Adobe has made some fundamental changes in the past few years. The company is no longer limited to building creative tools. With PDF and Flash, Adobe is becoming a formidable opponent when it comes to building platforms. If you look at the technology lineups from both companies, the similarities are striking. Here is what I mean,

• XAML (Microsoft) vs. MXML (Adobe)
• WPF (Microsoft) vs. Apollo (Adobe)
• WPF/E (Microsoft) vs. Flash Player (Adobe)
• Visual Studio (Microsoft) vs. Flex Builder (Adobe)
• Expression Studio (Microsoft) vs. Flash (Adobe)
• WCF (Microsoft) vs. Flex Data Services (Adobe)
• XPS (Microsoft) vs. PDF/Mars (Adobe)
• Infopath (Microsoft) vs. Livecycle Designer (Adobe)
• Biztalk (Microsoft) vs. Livecycle Workflow (Adobe)

The list is getting long, but I hope you can see my point: 2007 is going to be an interesting year.

Marcel Boucher has just launched the LiveCycle Productivity Kit. It’s an open source project that greatly simplifies the LiveCycle APIs – highly recommended for LiveCycle (Java) developers. Get it from the RIAForge while it’s hot.

XPAAJ is a Java library for processing PDF documents. It’s similar to LiveCycle Forms to a certain degree, and it’s completely free for the Adobe enterprise customers (if you bought either Flex, ColdFusion, or any of the LiveCycle products). This tutorial shows you how to take data collected from a Flex interface and merge that data with a dynamic PDF form using XPAAJ. Click on the icon below to watch the tutorial,

As the title suggests, this is a tutorial showing you how to leverage the form server to create dynamic forms. There is some coding involved, so feel free to download the sample code and play around with it. I’m really excited that I finally got this done because we now have covered enough fundamentals to start integrating with Flex. So next stop, Flexville!!