Adobe Cocomo. Why?
I just read a little about the new beta technology that they have released today called Cocomo. It supposed to solve a bunch of problems, like "real-time social capabilities" and "real-time multi-user applications." Features of the Cocomo beta include things like whiteboards and chat.
Ok, Adobe. Help me out here. What's the point? Don't we already have all of those things in Flash Media Interactive Server and Livecycle Dataservices? What problem are you trying to solve exactly? The biggest difference I can see at first glance is that this is a hosted solution, but....we already have that too (ie Influxis). We've had the technology to build real-time apps with Flash and Flex for years now.
I'll investigate a little more, but man this seems a little redundant, and I definitely don't see the value here. Hopefully they aren't planning to ax FMS or LCDS. I would love to know more about where they are going with these different technologies. Sorry, I just don't understand the "big, big deal". They don't seem to compliment each other very well....they're almost in competition with themselves.
Off to learn more...
2 Responses
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the response. I think it would be helpful if Adobe published some guidelines about where the lines are between the different technologies, and when to choose FMS, LCDS, BlazeDS, or Cocomo. The lines were already beginning to become blurry for me, and now to add Cocomo to the mix just confuses the issue.
The idea that a Flex developer could add some of this functionality to their apps without much server side knowledge is a big plus though. I know a couple of guys who would want to take advantage of that scenario.
I’m anxious to get my hands dirty with it and see what it can do…
Tim
I think you discount the hosting aspect. This is real time Flash and Flex apps in the cloud. You don’t *really* need to know much about Data Services or FMS to add a bit of collaboration to your application.
Sure, if you’re an LCDS/FMS rockstar, then I’m not sure Cocomo provides much benefit for you (again, other than the hosting). But I think this makes it much more accessible to a lot more people.
Plus, when you want to get more complex, you can use the Cocomo APIs to start adding more granular and customized collaboration.
=Ryan
ryan@adobe.com