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MXML: The XML framework behind Flex and Apollo
Markup languages have proven successful and relatively easy at laying out application user interfaces. MXML, the XML-based markup language introduced with Flex, builds on this success. You use MXML, much like HTML, to declaratively lay out the user interface of your application. As an XML-based markup language, MXML has a more structured and less ambiguous syntax than HTML. MXML also includes a much richer set of tags than HTML. For example, DataGrid, Tree, TabNavigator, Accordion, and Menu are all part of the standard set of tags. You can also extend the MXML tags and create your own components. But the most significant difference is that MXML-defined user interfaces are rendered by Flash Player, providing the users with a much more engaging experience than traditional HTML-based, page-centric web applications. To accomplish this, MXML is compiled into Flash *.swf files.
In addition to laying out visual components, you can also use MXML to define other important aspects of your applications: For example, you can declaratively define your application as a client for a web service, or define animations that provide the user with visual cues about the state transitions in your application.
While MXML is a proprietary language, the tools to work with it are free. An MXML to SWF compiler is available freely from labs.adobe.com and any text editor can write MXML.
This talk will focus on the high level aspects of MXML as a tool for declaring rich internet application GUI’s.
People planning to attend this session also want to see:
Duane Nickull
Adobe Systems
As Senior Technical Evangelist for Adobe Systems, Duane Nickull is responsible for Adobe’s messaging around enterprise solutions in the SOA and Web Services spaces plus other forward looking aspects such as the Web 2.0. Previously Mr. Nickull co-founded Yellow Dragon Software Corporation, a privately held developer of XML messaging and metadata management software, acquired by Adobe in 2003. He previously served as CTO and President of XML Global Technologies, acquired by Xenos Group in early 2003.
Mr. Nickull has written or participated in most of the larger SOA standards work in the past decade. He currently chairs the OASIS Service Oriented Architecture Reference Model Technical Committee (SOA-RM TC) which has just delivered a Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture. He served as a Vice Chair of the United Nations Centre for Facilitation of Commerce and Trade (UN/CEFACT) between 2003 and 2006. Within the United Nations, he oversaw the UN’s Electronic Business strategy and Service Oriented Architecture and modeling efforts. He has served as the project team lead of the United Nations (UN/CEFACT) Electronic Business Architecture Group (SOA) and a specially appointed liaison between the W3C, UN and OASIS standards consortiums. Additionally, Duane has served as the chair for the United Nation’s Electronic Business Working Group, a direct sub-group of CEFACT TMG and on the CEFACT TMG Steering Committee. He also has served as the Co-chair of the ebXML Technical Architecture group as well as co-editor of that specification starting in 1999, largely recognized as the first post-internet and post XML SOA. He has participated in writing many of the recent large Service Oriented Architectures that permeate the IT landscape today such as the W3C Web Services Architecture and also co wrote the Mackenzie-Nickull Meta-model for Architectural Patterns. Mr. Nickull has written and contributed many technical articles and books on these subjects
Mr. Nickull has been called Mr. SOA by his peers during introductions to speak on the subject due to his overwhelming experience writing and contributing to the major Service Oriented Architectures (SOA’s). Between 1995 and 2006, he spoke at over 500 venues in various countries around the world
Duane’s entrepreneurial activities also included being a co-founder of XML Global Technologies, Inc in 1997-8 with co-founder Matt Mackenzie. XML Global was noted as a visionary company in the advancement of XML based technologies before it was acquired by Xenos in 2003. Duane has recently renewed his work in the theoretical field of computational intelligence and has recently spoken to the Ontolog Forum on a proposal to build an event-causality aware inference engine coupled to a query-able ontology. Such mechanisms may one day bestow true cognitive and reasoning capabilities upon applications. In the field of semantic reconciliation, Duane was a co-inventor of the first Context-sensitive XML Search Engine (www.goxml.com) and the first web based XML E-Commerce ASP. He is named on pending patents pertaining to XML indexing and retrieval covering 51 unique points. He also served as Technical Director for XSLT.com.
He lives in Vancouver, Canada with his wife and three children, plays in a rock band, actively snowboards, races Porsche 911’s and mountain bikes. Duane first came to Vancouver playing in an original band in 1985 and made his living as a professional musician for several years.
Personal website: http://www.nickull.net Blog: http://technoracle.blogspot.com
Other links:
Google Search (over 160,000 results): http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Duane+Nickull%22&btnG=Google+Search
OASIS SOA RM Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm
United Nations Website: http://search.unece.org/cgi-bin/query?keys=nickull&x=0&y=0
W3C Website (co writer of architecture for web services): http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/arch/