2 questions for the price of one! Well, one of the answers is simple enough and it came in the same email so...
The questions: Can FMS be used to communicate with a SQL server and serve xml data to a client?
Is it possible for it to serve graphic images such as jpeg or pngs? What methods would accomplish this?
The answer:
We'll start with the talking to databases from Flash Media Server 2 I think. Up until FMS2 you had to use remoting to talk to a database. Now this isn't too bad but it did require a technology that you weren't necessarily going to use anywhere else. Not too attractive to an application architecture manager. One more link in the chain of activities that the application needs to do.
One of the greatest additions in my mind that was added to FMS2 is the fact that you can now talk to any server side page (asp, php, cgi, cfm, jsp etc etc). Of course with that comes the ability to now read in XML from any server out there, it all works exactly the same as the Flash XML object and loadVars object.
There are tons of examples out on the internet on how to do this so I'll skip the example here, but needless to say that if you have used XML or LoadVars on the client side, you can now do that on the server side too.
For the second question of being able to serve up images like jpgs and gifs, no, unfortunately FMS doesn't have this ability. There was somebody who managed to send over the pixel by pixel information through Central (a now dead technology) but it was quite slow. Interestingly enough though was that it was possible. Perhaps Apollo will offer some abilities like that?
I've received a rather cool offer from the YMCA here in the lower mainland to teach web design and development from next month (sept). I'll be talking from the basics to a few advanced topics and most definitely will be talking about Flash and FMS. I've got to say though that there is so much to talk about in so little time.. should be fun though.
Since being back in Canada our local presence has grown quite fast and am starting to get quite a few local companies contacting me concerning all kinds of projects. It's quite exciting actually. Global clients are great but there is something about having a strong local presence that is pretty cool. I haven't quite put my thumb on it, but there is something that just gives a better overall feeling.
So anyways, if you happen to be in the lower mainland here and are looking to learn some web design/development at quite reasonable prices (not for profits are usually quite cheap in comparison) stop in at the Tong Louie YMCA on the #10 and 152st and ask about the class.
I recently found that I will be relocating to Tokyo the end of the month. While I am not new to Japan, it is the first time I will be residing in Tokyo, so would love to have some people to get together and talk shop over coffee or a pint. If you are in the area and would like to get together or know any regularly scheduled meet-ups (design, flash, mobile, etc), please let me know.
Got a question today that is pretty common to hear when people want to know how FMS compares to other technologies out there.
The question: Is it possible to split live videos on the server for different bandwidths?
The answer:
Well, unfortunately no. The best you can do is to limit the amount of bandwidth that the client can use and the flash player will throttle the video/audio appropriately. Remember video then audio gets throttled (in that order). Data is always sent. In other words text chats will always work, whereas video maybe choppy or almost stopped and audio may cut out or be non existant.
Take a look at the client.setBandwidthLimit() method on the server side for more info on what I'm talking about.
You can also try using the NetStream.receiveVideo() method to bring down the FPS.. but I've heard this doesn't work quite that well. Might be worth a try depending on what you are doing though.