Adobe has announced the release of Flex 2.0 beta products to the developer community.
The existing Flex rich client can readily handle modest amounts of data, such as an individual making an isolated bank account query, but it lacked the ability to ferry large volumes of complex data.
For instance, the current version of Flex runs out of gas when it came to more complex tasks such as handling online mortgage applications. They typically involve input of large amounts of personal data and retrieval of information on an array of mortgage loan options.
Similar problems would apply to applications such as configuring a motorcycle order online, involving text, image, or video data.
Flex 2.0 is designed to handle heavier, more complex loads. A demo shows how you could conduct an online search for restaurants, and watch the list of retrieved results increase as you add categories to your search dynamically.
Admittedly, these improvements may be an important step towards making Flex 2.0 enterprise, e-business, or rich media ready. But on their own these enhancements are incremental and not terribly exciting.
Of more interest is how Adobe will leverage the goodies from its side of the business, and that of Macromedia, which it is now absorbing. Having come from the Macromedia side of the house, Flex could benefit from the unparalleled array of publishing, graphics, and web client technologies that the combined company offers.
For instance, it would be good to see mash-ups where Flex clients could publish and display PDF documents dynamically. And that would be just the start.
However, meaningful integration of Adobe web publishing, visual design, and authoring technologies into the Flex framework will, understandably, take a bit more time given that the Macromedia acquisition has only recently been consummated.
