For an overview of the new winter 09 features and how salesforce developers can make use of them, there is a free webinar available at developer.force.com.
Full release notes are available at https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_winter09_release_notes.pdf.
Some of the significant enhancements include -
In what is definitely a move that further signifies the increasing significance of cloud computing and SAAS (software as a service), Oracle announced at Oracle Open World that their database product would allow backup to Amazon’s S3 storage service.
Read more about it onOracle’s Technet Cloud Computing Center
Whether this takes off for large enterprises remains to be seen but it is definitely worth looking into for small to medium sized businesses. Now data storage and maintenance does not have to be onsite, nor does the business have to incur the expense of hardware, support and staff.
Adobe Flex is an open source platform that allows you to create RIA (rich internet applications) easily that can run on all browsers and uses the Adobe Flash Player. This platform is of special interest to Salesforce users because Salesforce provides a flex toolkit that eases integration between Flex and the Salesforce APIs.
Adobe provides a easy to follow course that will get you up to speed with Flex at Flex in a Week.
Salesforce developers can go to the ADN website to learn more about integrating Flex with Salesforce.
