FlexLive.net

I’m working on a multi-part tutorial on how to build enterprise solutions using Flex and LiveCycle. Here is the first episode that demonstrates the use of LiveCycle Designer. Please feel free to leave a comment so I could adjust my future tutorials accordingly.

It’s not very often that an enterprise product is associated with the word “amazing”, but this one is an exception. Of course I’m talking about the XML routers from Solace systems.

To use the router, an user would upload XPath subscriptions via a Java API. Whenever an XML document is published to the router, it would be routed to the subscribers with a matching XPath. At the heart of the router is a custom ASIC chip that could read XML documents and perform XPath matches in near realtime. Think of it as “hardware accelerated” XML parsing, but that’s not all. If you take a few of these routers and make them visible to each other, they will automatically exchange their subscription data, so the routers become a single entity from the user’s perspective, making it extremely efficient for data multi-casting.

This is exciting news for LiveCycle Workflow because we can now offload certain segments of the workflow into this XML crunching machine. These routers could also be used to load balance multiple Workflow servers or provide a bridging service between Workflow and other enterprise products. The possibilities are endless.

I think this is going to be a very disruptive technology as the demand for high performance XML routing increase in the enterprise space. Cisco has developed a similar product known as the AON and IBM was very quick to integrate WebSphere with AON. It would be wise for Adobe to reach out to Solace or Cisco and make sure LiveCycle works well with their XML routers.

In one of his recent blog posts, Ryan Stewart plotted the number of sessions by product at the MAX event into a pie graph. Not surprisingly, LiveCycle received a very small slice of the pie compare to Flex and ColdFusion. Like many that are familiar with the product suite, I have always felt LiveCycle is not receiving the attention it deserves. This colorful graph just did a fanstastic job putting that in quantitative terms.

So why does Adobe deprive LiveCycle the attention is deserves? It is because LiveCycle hasn’t crossed the chasm yet. In the book “Crossing the Chasm”, G. A. Moore taught us that the nature of the hi-tech industry presents a large chasm between the early adopters and the early majority. For a solid product like LiveCycle, it is relatively easy to win over the early adopters. But for the product to become the next cash cow, it has to win over the early majority customers. So how do we cross the chasm between the early adopters and early majority? Well, first the product managers have to realize that grass-roots adoption matters even for enterprise prodcuts.

So here is my million dollar idea of the day: make LiveCycle avaialbe to the public. I’m not talking about giving out trial versions. Instead, we should take a page out of the Microsoft playbook – make the core products cheap/free and charge a premium for the advanced features. e.g. Microsoft gives away SharePoint Service for free and charges a ridiculous amount for the SharePoint Portal Server. If we could give away LiveCycle Forms, people would be able to build full blown form processing solutions without paying a penny for licensing. But if they want to take their solution to the next level, they would have to buy our LiveCycle Form Manager.

Adobe recently started giving away XPAAJ, which is step in the right direction. Hopefully, core products in the LiveCycle lineup such as the form server and the workflow engine could all be made free by the LiveCycle 8 release. I doubt any LiveCycle product manager would be reading my blog, but like I said, grass-roots matters. If our perspective customers start asking for it, our product managers would be happy to comply.

The US government has recently kicked off an initiative to digitize the nation’s medical record systems. Charles and I have been toying around with the idea of integrating Flex and LiveCycle to fill a particular business need, and it appears the opportunity has just presented itself. Our demo is scheduled on Aug. 9th, so we got exactly three weeks to pull this together. We wrote up a preliminary document with project vision, scope, and key requirements (follow the PDF link below). I’m going to be posting our progress on this blog in the next weeks, so stay tuned

Earlier today, a blog entry from Uneasy Silence accused the Adobe Reader for being too bloated. It was getting a lot of attention on digg due to the inflammatory nature of the post. My comment regarding this issue was getting a lot of diggs as well, so I decided to repost it here.

First of all, I agree with the fact that Adobe reader is bloated. The reason being that Adobe Reader contains many features people normally wouldn’t see (e.g. commenting, digital signature, etc.). There is a server side product called LiveCycle Reader Extensions that allows the document author to selectively activate those features. There used to be a stripped down version of the Adobe Reader, but it was dropped to avoid confusion. If there is enough demand for it, they just might bring it back.

In the meantime, if you are unhappy with the performance of your Adobe Reader, you could disable some of the plugins by following this short tutorial posted on DWTIPS.

Having focused mostly on LiveCycle in the past few months, I have to admit that my Flex knowledge is pretty shallow. Fortunately, Total Training just released a training kit for Flex 2. I’m still waiting for mine in the mail, but I promise I’ll give you a detailed review once I get my hands on it. In the meantime, here is a blurb from their press release and a coupon you could use,

Learn how the Adobe Flex 2 product line delivers a standards-based programming methodology to combine the richness of the desktop with the reach of the web. Presenter, James Talbot, has been with Adobe for over six years, on both the sales engineering and training teams. James has also authored two books: “Object Oriented ActionScript 2.0″ and “Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source”.

Discount: 20% off Flex 2 (series)
Coupon Code: save20flex2
Starts: Midnight on 7/18
Expires: Midnight on 8/31

As promised, here is my first tutorial. It’s a 10 min clip demonstrating how to connect the SunOne directory server to LiveCycle. Click on the icon below to launch the video,

“The best way to get a job is to start doing it without getting paid…”.

As a soon-to-be new grad, I’ve been running around looking for career advices in the past two months. Thanks to our nice HR lady Jennifer, I had the opportunity to meet many accomplished folks with successful careers, but I was still somewhat uncertain what to do next. A recent meeting with our tech evangelist, Mike Potter, really changed my outlook on things. Mike’s “just giver” attitude made me realize that the best way to get the job I want is to roll up the sleeves and get my hands dirty. So here it is, my blog. I want to be an evangelist someday, and this blog is going help me learn the ropes.

The focus of this blog is Adobe’s enterprise product line, namely Flex and LiveCycle. I’ll highlight neat solutions built using Flex/Livecycle, as well as comment on media buzz relevant to the technology. To differentiate my blog, I’ll also deliver bite-sized tutorials on a weekly basis. Please stay tuned and feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed.