PressFile
http://host.pressfile.com
Harper Collins

Harper Collins - one of the world's largest publishers required a web based solution to be made in RIA viz. The Pressfile.

Magnet's biggest RIA (Rich Internet Application) till date and arguably first of its kind in the world. This project involves porting the Filemaker Pressfile application to Flash.

Pressfile is an extensive Rich Internet Application. Usability, features, response time, coding standards, rapid development and project management - everything was important.

It utilizes the cutting edge technologies from Macromedia. Its essentials can be listed as

	Fully object oriented, using As2
	Application of a mix of Form and Timeline based design
	Model View Controller architecture
	Extensive use of components - Data, UI and third party
	Uses Flash Remoting with ColdFusion components
	Works in a multi-user, multi-location environment
	Built for large data sizes - works with more than 50,000 people and thousand of orgs and lists
	Built for large user database - Flash and SQL database is extremely optimized
	Traps error at the client level and provides a way out
	Usability and Interaction Design are at the heart of the application
	A whole lot of miscellaneous features and tricks - file upload from flash, large scale mailing using ColdFusion, Query Caching at ColdFusion, Stored Procedures at SQL Server, Strong security and access control, reports generated in MS Word format using ColdFusion, spring loaded loading animation for each user action, application profiling and debugging, localization support, etc.

Pressfile's RIA provides the cross platform, cross browser, standards compliant deployment methodology of web. It offers power user interfaces and functionality of desktop applications. This is augmented by the advance level design and animation of Flash. RIA designed in Flash allows enhanced user interactioneg. drag and drop operation. The client server communication can be completely transparent to the user. The application is freed from the "click and wait " loop with instant feedback too.

Flash also provides enhanced technical capabilities - support for all types of server technologies and database connectivity, web service support, uniform UI controls, multimedia integration tools, a mature client side programming language - Action Script, offline data storage, asynchronous communication mode and much more.

The business objective of RIA is to provide a better user experience which is more sophisticated. This is actually achieved by simplifying the user interaction and providing means to achieve more with less efforts. RIAs ca be used to develop new applications to cimplify complex processes like registration, online shopping and data analysis. RIAs can be effectively used to provide an engaging and interactive experience to customers or managers. RIAs can also be made to work with existing web application infrastructure and small modules can be deployed even as part of normal HTML pages.

Highlights
Over 4000 hours of development
Over 30,000 lines of custom Action Script code
Over 15,000 lines of ColdFusion and SQL code

The solution uses cutting edge technologies from Flash MX 2004, ColdFusion MX and SQL Server.