FlashORB 1.5 Beta 1 is available for both Java and .NET environments! The version introduces significant improvements in the areas of security, session and exception management. FlashORB security system allows integration with any third party security domain. Applications can be secured with custom authentication and authorization handlers.

New applications demand sophisticated visual interfaces in order to provide rich user experience, simplified application navigation, real-time data feed, middle tier driven events and many other features. Rapid adoption of Macromedia Flash MX, started a new era of Rich Internet Application development. Ubiquity of the Flash player plug-in along with significant advancement of Flash MX development environment create a powerful combination ideal to create dynamic, interactive, intelligent, event-driven enterprise applications.

FlashORB is a Flash Application Server. FlashORB consists of 3 major functional areas: Flash Remoting, Web Services Gateway and Interactive messaging. Flash Remoting subsystem of the product is the most powerful implementation of Flash Remoting. It is fully compatible with Macromedia Flash Remoting components and provides a number of unique features to even further simplify and enhance Flash client-server communication. Web Services Gateway overcomes Flash sandbox security limitation and allows Flash clients to invoke web services located anywhere in the Internet. Interactive Messaging subsystem features powerful XML Socket Server built into FlashORB. It provides a framework that makes possible various client-server and peer-to-peer communication models, server push, broadcast and unicast messaging.

FlashORB is available for J2EE and .NET environments. The J2EE version of the product is available in two editions: FlashORB Standard and FlashORB Professional. The Standard version is free for most commercial uses. It offers complete Flash Remoting implementation. The Professional version is implemented on top of FlashORB Standard and offers features like Management Console, Security, XML Message Server and a variety of customizations. In addition to the features, FlashORB Professional comes with professional support from the developer of the product.

• Ease of deployment - FlashORB's architecture makes the product completely independent of the hosting environment. As a result, FlashORB can be deployed into any J2EE compliant application server and still offer the same set of features. In addition to the hosted mode, FlashORB can be started in standalone mode as it ships with an HTTP web server and servlet engine implementing Servlet API v2.3.
• Service Inspection - FlashORB enables developers to obtain detailed information about any server-side component/service including Java Objects, EJBs, Web Services or any custom service type (CORBA, RMI, COM, etc). The information includes service description, list of methods, list of arguments for each method, description for each of the arguments. FlashORB leverages the same 'Service Inspection' UI built into the Flash MX authoring environment.A Flash designer/developer does not need to learn any new user interfaces to use service inspection with FlashORB since Flash MX inspection integration is seamless
• Service Invocation- Service invocation is the core asset of FlashORB. One of the design goals was to make it as simple as possible to expose legacy or newly developed server-side components and services to the Flash MX clients. FlashORB makes it very easy to invoke methods on a variety of server-side service types. FlashORB does not have any special types representing client side objects; it automatically transforms data sent by the client into types accepted by the exposed components. As a result, exposing a server-side asset via FlashORB requires no changes to the method signatures. FlashORB provides out-of-the-box support for Java Objects, Java Beans, EJB and Web Services. This list can be easily extended by adding custom service adapters. Such adapters can be used to handle invocations against CORBA, RMI, COM objects or legacy systems.
• Security - Exposing server-side components without any security measures makes your server vulnerable for attacks and could have dangerous consequences. FlashORB provides rich, multi-tier security system. FlashORB server can be configured with multiple security levels ranging from global server-wide permissions to more granular i.e. method-level access properties. FlashORB implements multiple security methods and integrates with standard security domains like LDAP or Windows NT.
• Remote References - Support for remote references is a standard feature for all modern object request brokers, yet FlashORB is the only product capable of sending and receiving remote references to and from Flash MX clients. Using this feature simplifies client-server application development. Remote references shorten the gap between clients and the server by making server-side components and services appear as if they are local assets on the client.
• Management Console - Available in the Beta2 release, management console is a powerful Flash MX application designed to administer, manage, monitor and secure every aspect of the FlashORB server. Management console uses FlashORB to communicate with the server-side management objects.