Action Message Format(AMF) is a binary file format representing a serialized ActionScript object. The AMF file type is used throughout the Flash Player for data storage and data exchange. For example in the Flash Player AMF is used in SharedObjects, RemoteObjects, LocalConnection, ByteArray, RTMP, and all RPC operations. Some of the benefits of AMF include:

• File Size – AMF objects are very small and are compressed using zlib.
• Fast Serialization/ Deserialization – AMF is transformed using native C code in the Flash Player making it very fast. The AMF format was designed to serialize and deserialize quickly under low memory and slower CPU conditions making it perfect for the web. AMF data is parsed directly into objects, meaning there is no lag for interpretation or parsing of AMF making the creation of objects complete in a single pass.
• Native Types and Custom classes supported – You can serialize any object in Flash Player with the only exception being a displayObject.you can also map serialized objects back to custom class instanced provided the custom class is in the Flash Player when the AMF object is deserialized.

AMF existed in ActionScript 2 and was just called AMF as of ActionScript 3 the AMF protocol has been updated and is referred to as AMF3. For historical reasons the original AMF format is now referred to as AMF0. One of the main upgrades to AMF3 is that the object is now zlib compressed for faster transfer do to the smaller file size and the additional of data types that were released with ActionScript 3.

The two alternative frameworks that I am looking at are AMFPHP and Zend_AMF.

A collection of places and time shared together.
Music: from Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack.

BTW: joining of the names together and creating a heart was a pure fluke – yes….. it was meant to be.

I have a few concerns regarding a new product xcelsius.  Despite impressive results there are fundamentals shortcommings that will become evident while working with the application.

• Flexibility
  • The product is designed strictly to follow a particular approach.  This methodology is quite unintuitive and requires the developer to put additional effort when designing the model.  The structure is rigid and sometimes confusing.  Most of the time it feels like you are trying to create a workaround forcing the intuitive solution in to the Xcelsius model.
• Functionality
  • Overall the product looks like a 1/2 backed solution.  It is an implementation that is driven by the components provided with the standard load [some are not sufficient in terms of what is expected from a developer's point of view].  The platform is designed to rely on Microsoft Excel but lacks capability to take advantage of basic Excel advantages [like Visual Basic enhancements], the solution is restricted to support only a handful of Microsoft Excel functions/formulas.
• Maintainability & Support [This I believe is a major issue going forward with this solution.]
  • The application has no debugger.
  • Everything is linked to a Excel cells which can have complicated formulas. IE: cell A references cell B that references C which sums cells D through E which in it self point to cell F.
  • During the training we’ve agreed that we would want to call the database to load information directly.  This would eliminate the above mentioned complicated point.  But still – the developer will be left with a BLANK spreadsheet where one would have to guess where and how the cells are referenced. In laymen’s terms: try figuring out where Matrix!$D$21:$O$21 is coming from.

Overall this is just another attempt to market Adobe’s ability to present data, an attempt that failed miserably.

The tool helps those people who wish to write in a different language but are only familiar with a English based keyboard.This is a very basic version of the tool that simply translates character by character. I hope to improve it in the near future.

PS: The tool only translates the Russian language at the moment.

The information in the database was stored in Cyrillic format, hence when ever I was loading the data in to the SWF compiled file the end result was a collection of garbage data.  Setting the actuall HTML to Windows-1251 encoding did not help the situation.

My following approach was to locate a native functionality within the Flex architecture to mediate the situation.  Unforchunately I wasn’t successful in aquiring sattisfying examples to solve the problem.  For that matter it became sadly obvious that I haven’t seen any flash pages using non/english alphabet [either I haven't been checking international sites that much or Adobe Flex isn't widely used overseas] .

My third approach was to look at the actual php code that was generating the XML structure.  I’ve discovered a useful function mb_convert_encoding that eventually solved my problems.  Using a simple snippet of code:

mb_convert_encoding($string_to_convert,'UTF-8','Windows-1251');

I was able to convert the data from UTF-8 in to Windows-1251 which allowed me to display the desired Cyrillic characters.