Data Loading Benchmark

James Ward has created a Flex application for benchmarking data loading for RIA's. Thinking about the results from this tool there was something I thought worth mentioning. Firstly, what is clear from the results is how much faster Flex is for parsing and rendering data sets. It's ability to parse XML using E4X is extraordinary compared to AJAX. Therefore Flex is ideally suited to anything that requires repeated and regular data requests. But one thing that isn't immediately evident from the benchmark is that the applications file size also needs to be taken into consideration. Flex applications can quickly become quite large. While most AJAX frameworks are comparatively small. Consequently an application with fewer data requests might be better suited to AJAX. You also need to consider how often users will use the application because caching will reduce the impact of file size if the application is accessed frequently. So the more often an application is used the more appropriate Flex will be.

I will be very interested to see Silverlight included in these tests so that we can start to filter out the FUD from the facts.