Flex Viewer Application Builder Configure Window Questions

[TimHayes]

I have installed the ArcGIS Server Viewer for Flex 3.0. I also installed the Flex Application Builder. I have some questions about the Configure Window:

Under the Feature Properties-

What is "Use AMF"? it is checked by default.

What is On Demand Mode?

When would you use one versus the other?

What is Clustering?


An unrelated question-

Can Annotation Feature Classes be viewed in the Flex Viewer? if no, what is the best approach to get Annotation to view?

Point Symbol Rotation based on an attribute field, does Flex Viewer recognize this?

[AnthonyGiles]

Timothy

Replies are in red:

I have installed the ArcGIS Server Viewer for Flex 3.0. I also installed the Flex Application Builder. I have some questions about the Configure Window:

Under the Feature Properties-

What is "Use AMF"? it is checked by default.

AMF is a binary format that can be directly read by Flash clients. Using AMF can improve performance when interpreting query and geoprocessing results.

What is On Demand Mode?

When would you use one versus the other?

Choosing the display mode

When you create a feature service, you also need to specify one of these modes for retrieving features:

â?¢ On demand mode (the default) retrieves features as they are needed, requesting only the features within your current view extent. On demand mode potentially requires more round trips between the client and server. However, it protects you from retrieving more features than you need.

â?¢ Snapshot mode retrieves all the features from the layer immediately after the layer is added to the map. This reduces subsequent traffic to the server, but can become cumbersome if the layer contains many features. The browser may be overwhelmed by the number of features it needs to draw, or the service may reach its limit of how many features it can return at once. The default is 500 for ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 and 1,000 for ArcGIS Server 10. Use snapshot mode primarily with smaller datasets or with temporal data.

â?¢ Selection mode does not initially request any features. Features are added only when a selection is made. This mode is useful when you cannot or do not want to bring all features into the client, but you want to highlight one or more features for a certain reason, for example, editing, querying, or accessing related tables. Selections are drawn using a client-side selection color that you specify on the feature layer.

Query example: you can use a dynamic service for your general map representation, but when doing an identify or query you want to highlight the selected features.

Editing example: only the selected feature will be highlighted on the map within the FeatureLayer. Once editing is complete, the selection is removed from the feature layer and the user can update the dynamic map service layer to see the updated feature.


What is Clustering?

Showing a bunch of points grouped together, see:

http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/flex/samples/index.html#/Clustering/01nq00000024000000


An unrelated question-

Can Annotation Feature Classes be viewed in the Flex Viewer? if no, what is the best approach to get Annotation to view?

Not 100% sure but I think the viewer does support this

Point Symbol Rotation based on an attribute field, does Flex Viewer recognize this?

Versions pre 3.0 dont not sure about 3.0

Regards

Anthony