On July 16th 2008 I attended the ZoomFLEX|ShadoCMS European Tour event organized by Grant Straker and David Sowerby. We were a small group with Sakri and some other colleagues.

What is ZoomFlex

ZoomFlex is an easy to use browser based tool that generates Cairngorm based Flex applications with fully integrated data and server side components – powered by the Adobe ColdFusion application server.

My first thoughts

I have never been a big fan of CMS or code generators, but I must admit that I was pretty impressed by the generated code in ZoomFLEX. Briefly, you’re using the Object Designer to build your application, generate the code (Cairngorm based + UM extensions) and import the whole project back to Flex Builder for a “final edit”. Working like this can really save you a lot of time ! Please note that ZoomFLEX is available as a hosted service but also as a standalone install (CF8 required – Flex+CF rocks ! ).

After the demo, the discussion quickly turned (again) around the frameworks : Cairngorm vs PureMVC (I told them to have a look at MATE too ! )

Thanks again to Grant and David.