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Any thoughts on using Flex to build an RIA for administering a complex rails app.

We are starting to find it difficult using ajax to keep our admin section intuitive and easy for users to work with.

Would welcome any advise or suggestions you all may have



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5 Answers

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You've got RoR guys working on this program and you've managed to develop a complex rails app that has enough subtleties that the admin section is difficult to use.

The answer to this problem is not to use a different programming language to create a whole nother kinda app to do the admin.

It will help more to get assistance in simplifying and organizing your admin section. Work through some paper sketches to get a better idea of how to present this complexity and maybe reveal complexity as you go along.

Complexity is handled often by using wizards or revealing suboptions as you go along. Spend some time with your users and watch them do their tasks.

With more details I could edit this answer with more specifics.

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Try investigating this book:

Flexible Rails

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Flex is certainly worth considering in your scenario. Generally, Flex is more mature development platform than AJAX is so if your server-side data are exposed via some reasonable interface (web services, REST-full services etc.), building a Flex front-end would make sense.

It really depends on your needs - Flex vs. AJAX is an interesting topic on its own.

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If you want to use XML for communication then there isn't much you need to do on the rails side. But if you want to use an AMF gateway you will want to checkout RubyAMF.

But I agree with MattK if you just want to redesign your admin section it's not worth adding in Flex. I think you just need to do some usability testing, take that feedback and refractor your interface.

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I would only consider using Flex in your situation if you already have Flex developers or if you could outsource that part of your project. The Flex modules simply call web services (written in Ruby or whatever) so there is a very nice separation between the two parts of your project. Since the interface between the two parts is an easily-mockable web service, outsourcing works well. There should be plenty of web shops local to you who could handle the work. An admin site should take only two to three weeks to develop in Flex if the developers are knowledgeable.

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