Model-driven applications

Adobe application modeling technology is a set of technologies that facilitates the development of data-centric applications. Use application modeling technology with Flash Builder to generate code based on a data model for communicating with Data Management Service and RPC service destinations. Generated client code for Data Management Service destinations is built on the DataService object. Generated client code for RPC services is built on ActionScript objects such as RemoteObject and WebService objects.

Two types of model-driven development

There are two types of model-driven development with LiveCycle Data Services:

  • The first type is end-to-end model-driven development for both client and server code. You control the application code on the client and server by customizing the model from which code is generated.

  • The second type is model-driven development of client code you can use with existing server destinations on the LiveCycle Data Services server. In this case, you generate a model and the corresponding client-side ActionScript code by introspecting a destination on the LiveCycle Data Services server. This type of development is useful when you have existing destinations. However, it gives you no control over the server implementation and very little control over the client implementation. You can make only limited changes to the model, and those changes affect only client code generation.

When you perform end-to-end model-driven development, you can generate Data Management Service destinations based on a model without writing any Java code. The generated server code is based on the Assembler interface of the Data Management Service and uses the Hibernate object/relational persistence and query service. The generated server code works in combination with the generated client code in Flash Builder.

Use the following software to build an end-to-end model-driven applications with LiveCycle Data Services:

  • LiveCycle Data Service server

  • Flash Builder

  • Application modeling plug-in for Eclipse (the Modeler)

  • SQL database configured as a JDBC data source (Model Assembler feature only)

For general information about application modeling technology, see the Application Modeling Technology Reference.

The role of Flash Builder in model-driven development

Flash Builder uses application modeling technology in features that simplify the development of data-centric Flex client applications. Flash Builder generates client code for calling remote services.

The data-centric development features in Flash Builder depend on an application modeling technology model from which Flash Builder generates the ActionScript code for calling a remote service.