Setting Up Development Environment - LC, Flex, CF

[Former Community Member]

Hi. I'm a ColdFusion programmer, but am completely new to Flex and LC. I'm starting a new project where I want to build a collaborative RIA in Flex. I've found a lot of good tutorials that do just this, and it looks like LiveCycle is exactly what I want. There are so many different possible configurations though that I'm not sure how to set up my development environment for what I want to do.



I have a spare PC that I'm going to wipe clean and use as my server for this, so I'm looking for information on what I need to do to go from a clean slate to a development server for collaborative Flex applications (think real-time chat interface to start with). Can I simply install CF8 and the version of LiveCycle that comes with that, along with a database server (PostgreSQL preferable) and be good to go, or is it going to be much more complicated than that? Do I need to install another application server first? I'm hoping to get away with using WinXP Pro as the OS since I'm shooting for FREE (I already own the license) and this is purely for development, but if that simply won't work I'd appreciate suggestions there as well.



ANY suggestions or pointers in the right direction are greatly appreciated!

[aoatak]

You can use LiveCycle turnkey installation in your development environment. Turnkey installation is bundled mysql and jboss/weblogic. For system requirements and installation guides you can check:

http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/livecycle/



Oguz

http://www.kgc.com.tr

[kevinSuttle]

There really needs to be a demystification of all this surrounding LCDS installation. Either you're installing it as a Tomcat, or you're installing it on top of CF8. No one can just come out and say "this is what you need to do [x], here's how you install it."



Do you install it manually or in your CF8 wwwroot? No one seems to know? Trying to update is a nightmare too as it is completely manual and can be riddled with errors if the slightest thing is off. Help!

[chetanm_oct]

ColdFusion 8 comes with LCDS 2.5.1 Express bundled with it. You do not have to deploy anything else. Its ready to use!!



LiveCycle ES is a different stuff altogether and would probably be not required here.

[kevinSuttle]

Thanks Chetan. We have a client that has a need for something that points to LiveCycle as a solution. The problem with my lack of knowledge in messaging formats is that Cocomo, BlazeDS, AMF, and all permutations of LiveCycle all seem so similar to me. I am not understanding how each one works with ColdFusion and Flex or when/why I should use one over the other. There aren't any clear distinctions in my untrained eye. Can you shed some light or point me in the right direction? All the product pages seem to be filled with marketing terms, and don't tell you exactly when you would need each product.

[chetanm_oct]

All these technologies are different



AMF - Its the protocol which is used by Flex applications to communicate with server side components. So any Flex application you make can invoke server side code by sending message in AMF format



BlazeDS - Its an open source version of the LCDS. It is a framework which would enable you to expose your server side services to be invoked by Flex application. The server side service can be any Java based code, ColdFusion component etc. And the Flex code running in browser can invoke such services using AMF channel. For a comparison between BlazeDS and LiveCycle have a look at http://www.infoq.com/articles/Blaze-LiveCycle



Cocomo - Its a product provided under Adobe Labs. Its basically Software as a service Platform and provides a SDK using which you can create applications which can make use of various services offered by Adobe. Refer to

-- http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/afcs/

-- http://www.seyboldreport.com/adobe-releases-public-beta-cocomo



LiveCycle ES - Its a product which provides a platform and various solution components enabling you to create business/enterprise application.



For typical apps which want to use Flex and invoke remote services, the default ColdFusion setup is pretty much sufficient.

[kevinSuttle]

Thank you very much for your effort Chetan. You've been very helpful. I just want to play with LiveCycle to see what it can do when used in conjunction with Flex and integrated with ColdFusion (since it's already set up as my standalone J2EE server). But I am having trouble figuring out exactly what and where to install. I'm assuming I need to be using LiveCycle Data Services. I installed the latest version, telling it NOT to install as a separate Tomcat server and to C:\lcds. I then wanted to integrate the latest versoin (2.6) with my CF install.I followed the following guide, which is a little lengthy and not exact, but I managed to get through it.



http://justjoshn.com/entry/integrating-coldfusion-8-01-with-livecycle-ds-2-6-beta



That was finished, so I kept trying to follow the getting started docs to run the testdrive-httpservice Flex project, but I kept running into steps that were missing in the tutorial and found errors in my setup left and right. For example, nowhere does it mention how to set up Flex so certain swcs can be included, or set which SDK you want to use. I figured out that I needed to select the one on the app server, which gets a little confusing, seeing as the example lcds-samples directory and the CF WEB-INF directories look very similar. There should really be a way to automatically update these services. Doing it manually introduces a much higher possibility of error from the user, and increases frustration when trying to troubleshoot b/c all the swcs and WEB-INF directories look the same.



Anyway, I got everything talking, but the samples I compiled in Flex would request data but never return any.



All I want is to be able to use the latest versions (CF 8.1, Flex 3.3), and whatever flavor of LiveCycle I need to get up and running learning the LiveCycle technology (presumably LCDS). There is a lot of documentation about installing it as a Tomcat server, but very little about installing it with ColdFusion. Those are really the only 2 ways of doing it, aren't there? I'm pretty sure I'm not doing this right, but a direct, step-by-step instruction, or better yet, an updater msi or pkg for each kind of setup would be great.



What is the best way and location to install/update LCDS on Windows XP for use with Flex and ColdFusion? I have looked all over but cannot find any info on actually installing it! Thanks in advance.

[chetanm_oct]

Kevin,<br /><br />Probably the default LCDS configured with the ColdFusion 8 server would be sufficient for you and you need not install the latest one<br /><br />I am not sure about the steps required for LCDS upgrade with CF server but for BlazeDS you can find the steps within the BlazeDS source release from http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/blazeds/Release+Builds. The required steps are provided at <cf_src>\resources\ColdFusion folder. <br /><br />For LCDS steps must be similar if not same

[kevinSuttle]

Thank you Chetan. This is what I needed. I appreciate your time and effort!