The universal spatial backend - ColdFusion
I have just been reading some of the postings out of Max and just ran into Sean Corfield's post on Ray Camden's info on hooking into .Net natively from ColdFusion. Now couple this with Flex -- and stand back. I am currently working Paul Hastings -- well Paul is doing the work -- on a ColdFusion / Flex / ArcIMS project that hooks into the Java connector on the backend via ColdFusion.
Now imagine a world where a Flex client with its native vector capabilities can hook into other services -- even WFS native vector streaming -- and then pull in WMS services from wherever (native transparency) and even ArcGIS server (leveraging your existing ArcObjects code, Models, Data Tansformations via Interop) -- .Net or Java (who cares) and then natively layer all that stuff into one unified system -- that can hook into any web service -- say SAP, Oracle, whatever -- well you get the idea...Oh yeah, and then Apollo will come and all this can run as a desktop app with fine-grained pdf support...