BlazeDS?! What’s that? Ok, ok, we know what it is, but mostly because a ton of people switched over from it to WebORB. What’s interesting is that WebORB for Java does not really compete with BlazeDS, since feature-wise WebORB goes above and beyond and is a direct alternative for Adobe’s LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS). However, we get the question of “how WebORB is different from BlazeDS/LCDS” quite often. A few weeks ago we conducted a webinar where we explored the major differences between the products. Below is a brief summary of the top 10 things you would not be so lucky to have if you use BlazeDS. All of these are discussed in detail in the webinar recording. Also, in case if you are not aware of it, all of these features are available at absolutely no cost with the WebORB Community Edition:

1. GenericDestination – Flex clients communicate with Java backend through an abstraction called “destination”. With WebORB, you can deploy any supported service type (POJO, jar, Spring bean, EJB, etc)  and start invoking methods on it without any configuration changes whatsoever.  That way you can go from deployment (which is as simple as copying your jar into WEB-INF/lib) to development without any intermediate steps.
2. Service Browser – WebORB Service Browser is a part of the management console (which is yet another differentiator altogether). The Service Browser provides a unified view for all supported service types where you can explore the contents of the deployed JARs, see the list of POJOs, Spring beans, Web services and EJBs exposed as remoting services. Using the service browser you can set security restrictions and invoke service methods directly from the console.
3. Code Generation – The service browser described above is also the front-end for a very powerful code generation capability. For any service shown in the service browser, WebORB can generate the client-side code for various client environments and frameworks. For example, with a single click, you can obtain all the ActionScript code formatted for the PureMVC, Cairngorm, Swiz or Mate framework. The generated code includes all the code enabling client/server invocations as well as the ActionScript value object classes corresponding to the server-side VOs. In addition to the ActionScript code, WebORB can produce code in JavaScript and Silverlight outputs.
4. AJAX RPC – In addition to Flex and Flash clients, WebORB also provides support for remoting invocations using JavaScript/AJAX and JSON clients. All supported server-side service types can be invoked from any JavaScript-enabled application or web page.
5. Silverlight RPC – WebORB supports remoting invocations from Silverlight clients in the same capacity as with Flex. The product includes a client-side Silverlight assembly which implements serialization and deserialization logic between .NET CLR and Java. The on-the-wire protocol used by Silverlight is AMF over HTTP. As a result, the serialized messages are compact and optimized to ensure fast and efficient data transmission.
6. Data Management – WebORB data management is a powerful system for building data-driven client-server applications. The system generates both client (ActionScript) and server (Java) code which enables full CRUD for all the tables identified in the data model. The system also includes a framework with very intuitive APIs to load database records into Flex/AIR applications as well as to create, modify or delete data in the database.
7. Data Paging – The Data Management system also includes support for data paging. The framework can automatically handle loading additional data (for example, when the user scrolls down the view port in a datagrid) into the data-bound UI controls.
8. Client Synchronization – Client synchronization allows clients operating on the same set of data to be notified when other clients make any kind of change in that data set. For example, a client can load and view records from a table. Another client could either make a change to these records or add a new one. With client synchronization, your client-side application automatically receives an event about a change. WebORB Data Management provides support for these events out of the box.
9. RTMP Support – WebORB includes RTMP support and offers the following features out of the box: video/audio streaming, video recording, RTMP-based data push, Remote Shared objects, broadcast, video chat, etc.
10. Messaging Code Generation – Messaging is a very powerful subsystem of the product. Clients from different environments (Flex, AIR, Flash, Silverlight, JavaScript and soon iOS) can use the publish/subscribe system supported by WebORB to exchange messages with the server applications or each other. To simplify the process of creating these types of applications, WebORB includes a code generator for different client types enabling publish/subscribe functionality.

The recording consists of four parts and describes the features I listed above in great detail. Enjoy!