title: JQuery VS Flex - Choosing a Platform for SAAS
body: <p>Our team is about to start a SAAS web application geared toward small businesses. This is a completely new experience for us; we are a system/linux/php development organization and no experience whatsoever developing client side software except for simple html/php based CRUD support applications.</p>
  
  <p>We are evaluating both Adobe Flex and JQuery. We can't seem to choose between the two. Our priorities are:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Productivity - We have to launch the soonest possible time.</li>
  <li>Overall User Experience - Resulting apps have to look professional and user must have pleasant experience using our product. I think this not a problem with both platform, though we will probably automatically lose 10% of potential users who don't have flash installed.</li>
  <li>Skill Reuse - We will all have to learn new language(s) and RIA platform on this project and hope we can use it again on more projects. BTW, we are a software contracting organization and this is our first foray to consumer apps. We are hoping though that we can leverage the skills we gain here for our clients.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Application Characteristics:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Data-centric - Lots and lots of CRUD operations.</li>
  <li>3-tier - Business logic will reside on PHP server and data will be on the MySQL. The RIA will only present the data to the user.</li>
  <li>User accessible data will be large - This is why we decided to use RIA. We can't refresh the page when user just made few alterations/additions.</li>
  <li>Security is paramount - I don't see any security implication on choosing one platform over the other but perhaps the community has some ideas?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>We are carefully studying this. We frequently hold competition among developers who can implement a test app faster by using a flex or jquery. We would love to hear what the community have to say though.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance!</p>