Datasheet

Chapter 1: Introducing Cairngorm

You probably won ’ t fully understand these descriptions at this point. Later sections of the book will

explore the concepts that inform Cairngorm (such as design patterns) and the individual pieces that

make up the Cairngorm framework. However, before moving on to examining the concepts and

structure of the Cairngorm framework, I want to point out a few things that will make those discussions

more informative.

You will see Cairngorm referred to as both a framework and a micro - architecture (as can be seen in the

preceding quotations). Both are technically correct, with micro - architecture being the more specific of the

two terms (that is, the one that describes Cairngorm on a more detailed level). The differences between a

framework and an micro - architecture will be discussed in later chapters. For now, just be aware that if

you see something describing “ the Cairngorm micro - architecture, ” it is referring to the same thing as the

Cairngorm framework.

Regardless of the differences you may find in descriptions of Cairngorm, most of them agree on the

following:

Cairngorm is targeted at the rapid development of rich Internet applications (RIAs) using the

Flex framework.

Cairngorm facilitates team development.

Cairngorm is suited for medium - to large - scale projects in which code needs to be separated and

organized.

The Cairngorm framework endorses and encourages best practices for building Flex - based

RIAs.

You will see in later chapters of this book that even these points are not without their critics and

challengers.

A Brief History of Cairngorm

Cairngorm currently exists as an open source project on the Adobe Open Source web site ( http://

opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm

). However, Cairngorm was not

created by Adobe. In fact, its creation is not even tied to the origin of the Flex framework.

Cairngorm was created by a company named iteration::two in Edinburgh, Scotland; the company was

founded by Steven Webster and Alistair McLeod. The name Cairngorm actually comes from a range of

mountains in the eastern Highlands of Scotland. Iteration::two was eventually was acquired by

Macromedia and became Adobe Consulting.

Cairngorm ’ s roots stretch back as far as Flash MX in the book Reality J2EE — Architecting for Flash MX

(Steven Webster and Alistair McLeod, Pearson Education, 2003). As the technologies for RIA matured to

ActionScript 2.0 and Flash Remoting with Flash MX 2004, the ideas behind Cairngorm were revisited in

the section on “ ActionScript 2.0 design patterns for rich Internet applications ” in the ActionScript 2.0

Dictionary (Steven Webster and Alistair McLeod, Macromedia Press, 2003). The ideas expressed in these

books originated from a subset of design patterns, advocated by Sun Microsystems, found in the Core

J2EE Pattern Catalog (

http://java.sun.com/blueprints/corej2eepatterns/Patterns/

index.html

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