What's VC positioning in relation to Flex 2.0?

[Former Member]

How would someone make a smart decision whether VC or Flex is more appropriate to build analytical or composite applications. Obviously looking at VC limitations (limited ui controls for example green/red lights or complex graphical representations) Flex would seem more appropriate but without knowing VC roadmap it's hard to make smart decision especially looking at future solutions rather than present.

so if we take the lights (Red, Organge, Green) as example, how would we use or implement this in VC today or tomorrow?

thanks in advance, Andre

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I don't completely understand the question of "VC versus Flex". VC uses Flex (and will use Flex 2.0) and adds a lot of functionality, like all the connections to diverse backends (transactional, multidimensional, relational).

The current limitiations of VC are known and will be reduced over time.

Lights: you can use lights by using the Image Manager in VC. Then you use formulas in Image fields to have them displayed. You can also use cell-formatting to choose the proper colours. Although today you have to model that, you can assume that more and more of this will be automated.

An example to see how this is used is in my weblog /people/mario.herger/blog/2006/05/13/adventures-of-our-times-visual-composer-bi-kit

Mario

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yopu provided some elements of answers to VC vs Flex when stating that the limitations are known and will be reduced over time.

how can we know what the limitations are with actual versions? and can we get insights inot VC roadmap

Is it fair to say that VC is a tool for business analyst not developer? If VC is also a tool for developer what's the key difference between VC and Flex when doing solution architecturing.

Let's say I've got an application to build involving graphical visualization of information that's different from what we see in VC traditionally (tables, charts). Let's say monitoring of a flow. That wouldn't be something VC could do right. Then would it be fair to say that Adobe Flex technology would be more appropriate here?

I'm just not sure from a technology and implementation standpoint where to draw the line between VC from SAP and Flex from Adobe

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Well: it's difficult to tell what are the limitations, when you expect to have that compared to Flex. Flex tools aim at a developer, VC more at a business analyst.

The VC definitely offers an easy way to model applications and to connect to diverse sources that are relevant for business applications (BI, JDBC, XMLA, RFC, Web Service,...), while with Flex alone you'd basically have to program that on your own.

Different controls, like flow controls, different chart types (sparklines, maps, tickers,...) are not (yet?) available with VC. There it's best to take Flex and programm them there. YOu can still embed such a Flash application into a VC application through the HTMLView.

With the next version of VC the Kit concept will be elaborated and allow to develop your own Kits, whatever Kits you have in mind. That will enable you to enhance VC functionality to a much larger extend and fill it up with functionality that might be very specific to you.

Mario