Introducing FlexFM

I signed off my last post with this post-script:
PS: Next I am going to make the same kind of thing to build a dataProvider object for Flex, so any insight relative to that appreciated.
Well, as fate would have it, my idea to build a Flex/FileMaker connector dovetailed perfectly with Scott Love's vision to fully embrace Flex as a second featured technology for Soliant. How cool is that?! I love working for Soliant! (nb: Soliant is hiring.)

Soliant has traditionally focused all sales and marketing efforts on the FileMaker niche. Other technologies have primarily served as extensions for FileMaker-centric solutions. After having carefully weighed the pros and cons, the Soliant brass concluded that both are fantastic RAD tools, backed by well funded, established companies, and, more importantly, Flex and FileMaker are not at risk of eclipsing each other.

Presented with a new focus on Flex, Soliant clearly needed a solid, industrial-grade connector class to allow Flex to play nice FMSA, we looked around and found the beginnings of a such a class created by Luke Pillow (in fact posted the same week I posted SimpleFM). We discussed joining Flex4FileMaker, but after some internal discussion, decided that we were interested in pursuing the "Simple" paradigm (inspired by SimpleXML in PHP 5) rather than the official FileMaker API for PHP paradigm (which Luke's Flex4FileMaker is expressly modeled on). So we rolled our own, based on the Simple paradigm, called FlexFM.

FlexFM, and the supporting examples and documentation were built and tested by four of the members of the newly appointed Soliant Flex SME team, Thomas Andrews, Jesse Lavere, Jamie Rupert, and me. Many many thanks to Scott Love, our visionary leader and champion.

We have open-sourced it under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike.

Jeremiah Small, Soliant Consulting, Flex Team

Comments

Luke Pillow said…
Great project! The development of Flex4Filemaker has not continued as I had originally planned and I’m glad that FlexFM is far superior with big plans for continued development! I will redirect all Flex4Filemaker inquiries to FlexFM.

http://deepthoughts.orsomethinglikethat.com/2007/08/22/flexfm/

Luke
3:01 PM
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