Flex isn't a silver-bullet in software development... it has its 'uglies' and its 'pretties.' The trick, as developers, is to learn to juggle a handful of technologies to arrive at a stable / cohesive product while maintaining a clear view of emerging trends.

Before I go further 'JORB' is a reference to a Southpark episode where people in the future use a time-portal to travel back into the past. The conditions are so bad in the future - they are forced to travel back into the past... work for peanuts... put their earnings into a savings account and voila! The future is saved! That is... unless you take into account the potential paradox that is injected into the space-time-continuum. Ahem... anyway.

On to the point. Technologies like Flex/AIR present a very appealing platform for future application development. Converging web/desktop apps into a single code-base, minimizing cross-platform issues and even providing a framework for distributed application development. Enters: Cross-domain RSL.

At first sight - you might be thinking, "Wow. This guy knows how to add two numbers... whoopie." The important 'stuffs' is not the app - but the approach. You'll notice from the source view that the MindJORB class isn't in the project. It sits elsewhere in an RSL (~1kb) that is loaded into the app at runtime (from this location).

http://www.quilix.com/samples/mindJORB/API/mindJORB.swf

So... what kind of things can be included into an RSL? Pretty much anything that you can code up: components, whole libraries, utilities, services, entire APIs and whatnot. Is it possible to create a Flex app running on one domain... and reference an RSL on another? That's the idea - yes. To add to the coolness factor - keep in mind that you can limit who connects to/consumes the RSL via your crossdomain.xml.

Flex/AIR isn't for everyone but for those of you with products, services and/or business models that are clearly headed in that direction. You don't have to scrap your entire bread-and-butter app in order to keep your JORB - you can start small and chunk your way into a bright future.

[ source : MindJORB RSL ]

[ source : MindJORB Consumer ]