Joe Lennon

In the first part of this three-part series on IBM DB2 pureXML, I show you how to get started with pureXML on a DB2 Express-C 9.5 database. You learn how to create and insert XML data into a relational table, and how to query that data using SQL, SQL/XML and XQuery. Next, you learn how to expose this data to applications using Web Services in IBM Data Studio. You create a database procedure that will insert data into the database, and this is also exposed as a Web Service. In Parts 2 and 3 you will learn how to take all of this and harness it in your applications, first in an Adobe Flex application for posting status updates, and then publishing profile badges an RSS feeds using PHP. You will also learn how to push your updates to Twitter using the Twitter API.

The pureXML® capabilities of IBM DB2® allow you to store XML natively in a database without modification, while Adobe Flex applications can read XML directly and populate Flex user interfaces. In this three-part article series, you will create a microblogging application that takes advantage of pureXML, Web services, and Adobe Flex; and even allows you to publish your microblogging updates on Twitter.

Read the article at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-db2mblog1/index.html

In November 2008, a tutorial I wrote titled “Implement a Facebook photo album using the Flex SDK” was published on IBM’s developerWorks website. The tutorial begins by introducing the Facebook platform and explaining how a Facebook application is created. It then moves on to the open source Flex SDK and the MXML markup language and ActionScript scripting language that are used to develop Flex applications. At this point, a simple Flex application is created to introduce the reader to the development and deployment of Flex applications. After this, the tutorial shows the user how to create a feature-rich photo slideshow (with transitions and controls) that uses the reader’s Facebook photos and is deployed to their Facebook profile.

The following is the description of the tutorial on the IBM developerWorks website itself:

Adobe® has released the free, open source Flex SDK framework to enable developers to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). The Flex framework provides you with a method of creating cross-browser, cross-platform Web applications that is quick and simple. Flex applications run in the Flash player, which is installed on the majority of Internet-connected computers, but Flex also provides you with an object-oriented user interface framework similar to Javaâ„¢ Swing. In this tutorial, develop a Facebook application in Adobe Flex that displays a slideshow of a user’s Facebook photo albums. The Facebook application will contain a profile box listing all of the user’s photo albums, each a link to a Flex slideshow of that album. The Flex application will use the Facebook REST API to fetch the photos of the selected Facebook album and dynamically generate the slideshow.

Read the tutorial at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/wa-dw-wa-facebookflex.html