When creating any desktop application there is almost always a time when you need to store data on the computer. Now with Adobe AIR we have several options. One would be that we could use the built-in SQLite database support, for a small amount of data this is overkill. Another option is that we could turn the data into XML and write out to a file, the problem with this is that we we have to write some kind of decoder if we want a typed object. There is yet another option we have in Adobe AIR, we can serialize the object into a byte array and write it out to a file.

Last week was Adobe Max, the biggest Adobe conference. This is always the event where Adobe announces all of their fun and interesting projects. They usually go over any product updates also, as they did this year with the CS4 suite. I wasn't lucky enough to get to go this year but the web is a wonderful place where I was able to keep up with it. The one issue is that it is sometimes hard to find the good stuff and this is the reason for this post.

Adobe added the ability to use local databases when they created AIR. This is one of the many features that help make Adobe AIR a great solution for cross platform desktop applications. In this quick tutorial I am going to show how to create a database file and open a connection to it. The code is very simple so let's jump right into it.

Some big news today for Adobe and the web in general. Today Adobe officially released Flex 3 and Adobe AIR 1.0. Both products are helping enhance desktop and web user experiences. I would suggest anyone creating or planning to create a web application to check them out.

So I decided it was time to start doing a few Adobe AIR application tutorials especially with the recent updates. This one is going to be a short tutorial on how to get your first AIR application going. The first thing we are going to do is get everything we need to start running and building air applications. This tutorial requires a small knowledge of Flex, if you need some tutorials on this we have plenty.

There are some really cool things going on for bringing web applications to the desktop, and Adobe AIR, formally Apollo, is one of them. Yesterday Beta 2 of Adobe AIR was released, which was announced at Adobe Max. You can download it from here. I also advise checking out the developer center to see sample apps and articles. One article in particular explains some of the new major features that are included in the beta.