Why use WebORB?

Posted At : May 27, 2008 2:01 PM | Posted By : Jeffry Houser
Related Categories: Flex, Professional, ColdFusion

This comes in from a reader Kai who asked why I use WebORB over the LCDS built with ColdFusion. This was Kai's question:


I am a long-term passive ColdFusion/onTap community member. Currently I try to figure out if to use WebORB, BlazeDS/LCDS or something else ... onTap does NOT run on BlueDragon so it will not be usable with WebORB, I guess ... My question is: - Do You prefer WebORB over LCDS and if yes, why ? - Is WebORB only recommendable for Flash/Flex clients, or for Ajax clients, too ? I know that LCDS comes with those Ajax Data Services and WebORB with the Rich Client System; both do NOT support Ajax as fully as Flash/Flex. Do You have an insight if using AMF for Ajax is advantageous at all ? Or if one is better off using a realtime data exchange engine (Comet) targeted at Ajax natively - like LightStreamer, for example ... If You can give some hints out of the top of Your head, that would be great :-)
Lots of stuff to cover in here, and he did ask for off the top of my head.

For those readers who don't know, when Kai says "onTap" I suspect he is referring to Isaac Dealey's onTap framework for ColdFusion. When he talks about BlueDragon, he is referring to the CFML server from New Atlanta. BlueDragon will be released open source under a dual licensing model. The latest release of WebORB supports CFC translation between BlueDragon and the Flash Player, a feature that exists natively in ColdFusion. You could use WebORB and BlueDragon as an alternative to CF and LiveCycle.

Do I prefer one over the other? No, I don't. I've use WebORB when dealing with .NET development and the CF Server (Which has LCDS under the hood) for dealing with web applications.

The benefit to AMF over XML is that the data passed back and forth is smaller, leading to less bandwidth and quicker load times. However,I haven't done any serious AJAX Development. I do know that WebORB has AJAX support. I was aware of AJAX Data Services, but never used that either. I am not aware of any AJAX AMF implementations, so I thought that both WebORB and AJAX Data Services used different protocols for non-Flash player communications.

In terms of Comet or Lightstreamer; I never heard of them before now so cannot comment. Anyone out there want to add their two cents?

A quick reminder to everyone, I love answering people's questions (even though I get busy sometime). Feel free to ask one!

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Kathleen's Gravatar Let's not forget that LiveCycle/LCDS comes with a pretty healthy price tag too, while WebORB licenses are free, so when you combine WebORB with the open source Blue Dragon for CFC translation, you get an enriched solution with support for Cold Fusion, but with no licensing fee.
# Posted By Kathleen | 6/15/08 12:42 AM
Jeffry Houser's Gravatar Kathleen,

;) To be specific it is an "enriched solution with support for CFML, but with no licensing fee." New Atlanta has been very meticulous in using "CFML" in their advertising, not ColdFusion.

Can you confirm that WebORB AJAX support does not support the AMF protocol?
# Posted By Jeffry Houser | 6/15/08 9:46 AM
ike's Gravatar Thanks for the link. :)
# Posted By ike | 8/4/08 7:46 PM
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