UPDATE 1: Flash Builder 4, BlazeDS 4, and Spring 1.0.3 have all been release so you no longer have to use beta or nightly builds of these products. Use the production versions!

UPDATE 2: A Refcard on Integrating Spring 3 and Flex 4, which I co-authored, is now available! It provides a step-by-step tutorial for setting up everything I show in the video below.

Last week I posted a screencast that walks through the basics of connecting a Flex 4 application to a Java / Spring back-end with the new Data Wizards in Flash Builder 4. Here is a new video that extends beyond just simple RPC method calls and adds Hibernate for persistence. Let me know what you think.

While at Dreamforce 2009 I was able to see some amazing enterprise Flex RIAs. Here is an RIA Cowboy Video of Right90‘s Sales Forecasting application. Let me know what you think.

UPDATE 1: Flash Builder 4, BlazeDS 4, and Spring 1.0.3 have all been release so you no longer have to use beta or nightly builds of these products. Use the production versions!

UPDATE 2: I’ve done a second part to this screencast that combines Flex 4, Flash Builder 4, Spring 3, BlazeDS 4, and Hibernate 3.

UPDATE 3: A Refcard on Integrating Spring 3 and Flex 4, which I co-authored, is now available! It provides a step-by-step tutorial for setting up everything I show in the video below.

Integrating Flex into portals has always been an interesting topic for enterprise developers. Other than a blog I did a while back there hasn’t been much information out there about how to get Flex apps into portals. But I just read a great article on IBM developerWorks about Integrating Adobe Flex with IBM WebSphere Portal. It’s a great read for enterprise developers looking to combine Flex and WebSphere Portal.

Edit: Whoops. It’s on the 14th not the 24th!

Intuit’s Cloud / Platform as a Service (PaaS) technology called the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) has quickly matured into a first class Client + Cloud solution. Building a custom user interface with IPP is done through Flex. This is a perfect combination and opens many opportunities for developers to build and sell apps into Intuit’s extensive ecosystem. They are doing a Webinar on January 14 about what’s new in IPP v2.4. This is a great opportunity to learn more about how you can build apps for the IPP with Flex. Definitely a session not to miss!

Episode 22 of Drunk on Software is certainly one of my favorites. Jon and Chet seem to think I fell asleep during the episode. Personally I think that I was temporarily abducted by some angry aliens that don’t like humans who wear bear hats. Hmmm.. Like the episode that makes no sense. So grab your favorite adult beverage (if you are of legal age) and enjoy!

Recently there has been a number of exciting advancements with the Flash Platform (Flex, Flash Player, and Adobe AIR). Here is a quick round-up:

Adobe released security updates for the Flash runtimes: Flash Player 10.0.42.34 and Adobe AIR 1.5.3. The Flash Player update fixes an issue with mouse scroll wheels not working in Flash when using Safari.

Recently, Adobe also released public betas for Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1. This Flash Player release fixes the “Incorrect unicode input in Linux” bug. Both AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 have a new API for Global Exception Handling (which was one of the highest rated feature requests on bugs.adobe.com). Check out Tour de Flex for some new samples on how to use this new and other new APIs.

At the Rich Web Experience 2009 conference, Matt Raible presented a very insightful comparison of “kick-ass” web frameworks including Flex, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Ruby on Rails and Grails. I appreciate his “right tool for the job” approach which moves beyond technology dogma towards real solutions. He includes some very revealing charts comparing jobs posts, StackOverflow posts, mailing list traffic and other stats. Check out the slides from his presentation:

On Thursday December 17th I’ll be doing an eSeminar about Salesforce.com and the Adobe Flash Platform. This is a great opportunity to learn more about how to build Flex RIAs on the Cloud using the new Flash Builder for Force.com tool. Sign up and see more details. Hope to see you there!

Devoxx is an annual developer conference in Antwerp, Belgium. Devoxx is typically held at the coldest, most miserable time of year to allow attendees to concentrate on the most important thing: Belgian Beer. Drunk on Software’s, Chet Haase, was at the conference this year, talking to various people in bars, in restaurants, and in bars about what they were interested in drinking, er, enjoying at the conference this year.