Macromedia Flex

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Macromedia unveils Flex (code named Royale), another building block of their Rich Internet Applications strategy. Flex is aimed at programmers and architects, using Flash, XML and a multi-tiered model (presentation with Flash client, a "presentation server" using XML and business logic using ActionScript running within a J2EE or .NET container, data). Watch the presentation of Flex for a better overview.

The presentation server model is very similar to what Lazlo Systems introduced some time ago.

Macromedia also announced that they are joining ECMA, the standard body that looks over ECMAScript, which you may know under various other names such as Javascript, JScript or... ActionScript.

P.S. I spotted that "Flex runs on top of a J2EE Application Server such as Macromedia JRun, IBM Websphere, BEA WebLogic, or Apache Tomcat." I've been teasing Macromedia with Tomcat since they acquired Allaire and it was obviously painful to them, but there are things one can't elude forever :-).