As you are probably aware, we have been working on a number of Flex based projects at Oracle. The deliverables so far have ranged from desktop gadgets to full fledged applications such as the Social CRM Applications and Oracle Metalink. Each day we hear from customers who are also building Enterprise applications with Flex - and using the best of Siebel (data, process, metadata) but exposing it through Flex or AIR. As the developments get more and more advanced, and larger in project size/scope, development teams are finding that there needs to be a more formalised approach to the application development and code structure.
Fortunately, there is a solution that may help you. Anvil is an Open Source project that was built to help make Enterprise Flex development easier. (It also provides a portal environment for running Flex applications).
In this video, Anvil project founder Ryan Knight, shares details about the problems Anvil solves, and the projects long-term goals. Ryan and James Ward (co-founder) also discuss some of the challenges of building applications with the Flex framework.
Whether you are using Flex or not - this is a brilliant video to watch as it discusses some of the darker sides of application development that seldom get considered when folks talk about technology or middleware. Most of this was hidden from the Siebel developer/customer but needs consideration when using Siebel with an alternative user interface - be it Flex, ADF or .NET.
