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Flex Article

 

Flex Application Performance: Tips and Techniques for Improving Flex Server Performance


Brandon Purcell

Brandon Purcell

 

Deepa Subramanian

Deepa Subramaniam

 

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Exploring Caching in the Flex Presentation Server
  3. Modifying the flex-config.xml File Configuration Settings
  4. Accessing the Flex Data Services
  5. Using the JSP Tag Library
  6. Precompiling MXML Pages
  7. Considering Your Deployment Options
  8. Load Testing Your Flex Application
  9. What the Future Holds...
Comments
Created:
3 May 2004
Modified:
01 November 2004
User Level:
Intermediate, Advanced

Macromedia Flex is a powerful platform that offers the ability to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Misusing this power can result in areas of poor performance. This article explores these performance issues and offers tips on how to get the most out of your Flex server. More specifically it explores:

  • The flexconfig.xml file and its impact on performance
  • The Flex caching model
  • Runtime Shared Libraries (RSL)
  • Efficient data delivery to the Flex client
  • Using the JSP tag library efficiently
  • Precompiling MXML pages
  • JVM tuning
  • Flex deployment options

Note that the tips suggested in this article do not apply to all Flex applications. It is important to analyze the structure of your own application and modify the suggestions to tailor them to your needs. For ongoing coding and conceptual help, you can use the Flex support forums.

Note also that this is the second part of a two-part article. The first part of this article, Flex Application Performance: Tips and Techniques for Improving Client Application Performance, discusses the client-side coding techniques that can be implemented to improve the performance of your Flex client application.

Requirements

To make the most of this article, you need the following:

  • Familiarity with Macromedia Flex and J2EE application servers (JRun, IBM Websphere, BEA Weblogic)
  • Some experience building Flex applications. (Ideally, you should have built at least one simple Flex application. If you haven't, see Creating Your First Flex Application.)

Macromedia Flex

Learn more about Macromedia Flex.

Macromedia Flash Player 7


PDF Version of the Article


Feedback and Support

We have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article and all code included. Feedback regarding this article and all Flex performance issues is always appreciated. To submit feedback, please email us.

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About the authors

Brandon Purcell started at Macromedia/Allaire four years ago as a support engineer working with ColdFusion and JRun. He has worked with the Professional Services Group helping customers with their architecture planning, code reviews, customized training, load testing, and performance tuning. He has also worked on special projects including the clustering, load testing and deployment of the new macromedia.com website. During his tenure with Macromedia, he has supported ColdFusion, JRun, Flash Remoting, and has written white papers and articles on clustering and high availability with ColdFusion and JRun. Currently he is working as an escalation engineer for the Flex Server Support Organization. You can visit him at his website.

Deepa Subramaniam is a software engineer for the Flex SDK. Straight out of UC Berkeley (Go Bears!), with an undergraduate degree in computer science, she has been at Adobe (formerly Macromedia) since 2004 and is very excited to be working on all things Flex related.