Comments on: Cairngorm – Flex Application Framework (My Initial Reactions)

By: Jon Rose’s Blog » Blog Archive » Cairngorm: All the worst parts of Java

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:59:34 +0000

[...] I first saw Cairngorm (post), it was easy to understand what they were trying to do, as the framework is so heavily influenced [...]

By: Jon Rose’s Blog » Blog Archive » Flight Framework for Flex & What is so great about MVC?

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:56:38 +0000

[...] consider using Flight, as I still don’t understand what value Cairngorm provides (old post 1 & 2). That doesn’t mean I don’t believe that Flight may have value, but in [...]

By: Jon Rose’s Blog » Blog Archive » Mate :: Flex Framework

Jon Rose’s Blog » Blog Archive » Mate :: Flex Framework — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:02:20 +0000

[...] have been rebelling against dragging additional frameworks into Flex just for MVC for a while now (Flex and MVC / Cairngorm). I finally got a chance to spend some time coding with Mate on a flight back from [...]

By: Tanuvan

Tanuvan — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 06:21:20 +0000

Overkill!!! Perhaps to pacify the Java fans. The Cairngorm just seems way to much for being practical. Value Objects are ok. It seems to me that Flex2 is naturally event driven, but some of these frameworks seem to complicate even the simplest of things.

By: Damien Jorgensen - Wales

Damien Jorgensen - Wales — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 08:09:42 +0000

I am just startig in Flex, interesting topics raised here

By: Bjorn

Bjorn — Tue, 22 May 2007 00:01:50 +0000

I’m a fan of using Delegates with Remoting.
I’m not sure how others are using them but my delegates basically mirror the DAO classes.
That way i have a client-side interface of the exposed DAOs.

Some areas of Cairngorm initally seemed overkill to me as well until I was assimilated and accepted that it is an industry standard framework and hopefully new developers coming into my project will find it easier to grasp because of their familiarity with Cairngorm.

I am always interested to read and try alternatives

By: ablesa

ablesa — Mon, 21 May 2007 22:02:15 +0000

Hey Jon, interesting point of view…
Maybe you’d like to take a look to guasax framework(http://www.guasax.com/blog), we are working in a altenative to cairngorm for resolve the same problem.
I hope you found this information useful.

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:23:10 +0000

I come from a Flash / designer background, so here are my responses.

1. why do I need this level of abstraction when there is a natural SoC in the client-server like programming model of Flex?

Delegates are invaluable when your backend is:
A) not done
B) not using Remoting

For A, if the API changes, the rest of my app gets the same data, I only have to change 1 class per call.

For B, if I’m not using Remoting, I have to parse data and make ValueObjects out of it. The Delegate handles all this mess with Factories. Again, the rest of my app gets the same data, no matter what the data is (XML, URL encoded vars, etc.).

Commands are then allowed to focus on just data handling, typically the core of the app. Since the Views are bound to that data, this heavy lifting code is not polluted with data parsing.

I can see later you dig Business Delegates too. You must understand, though, Commands can get VERY hairy since you are doing the most important updateing and changing of data. Keeping these classes simple and short makes your most important code easy to read, upodate, and maintain.

2. why introduce a Front Controller into an event programming model like Flex?

Agreed. To me, it’s just a formality. There ARE people who build wrappers around this that address the concerns you talk about, hence Cairngorm v2.2 having the ability to use weak listeners as well as removing commands programmatically. I still feel it’s a leftover to make Java devs comfortable.

By: justin

justin — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:24:24 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. I ended up rolling one consisting of view, controller, dataManager (service and data tranformation in one), session (modelLocator + transient session data)

By: jonr

jonr — Mon, 21 May 2007 16:06:26 +0000

Thanks for the comment Mark.
To clarify a bit, Flex does not offer any client side ways of accessing a database that I am aware of. If they ever do, it seems to me that it would get a bit scary from a security perspective. As you said though, they absolutely have Flex Data Services (server side) for providing access to backend services like the db, thus the natural SoC I am referring to in the deployment model.