This is my analysis to consider to use Flex technology over Cognos for dashboard purposes when using Aqualogic (by BEA):

• Did you know that Oracle has chosen Flex technology to revamp their user interface (UI)?  Last year, Oracle OpenWorld announced they will use Adobe Flex Technology at: http://www.jamesward.com/wordpress/category/oracle/
• At the BEA main Developers web site, their first article discusses Building Enterprise RIA Using Flex and WebLogic Server at: http://dev2dev.bea.com/
• BEA embraces Flex and now bundles Flex Builder (the software used to create Flex solutions) into BEA Workshop Studio for FREE at: http://dev2dev.bea.com/blog/wgroth2/archive/2007/10/_bea_workshop_s.html
• The external BEA Website has a community for Flex at: http://www.bea.com/flex/
• The Flex Framework is Open Source.  Meaning we will have plenty of developers to chose from when needing to hire for Flex resources.  Open Source is embraced by the development community inside and outside of many large companies and therefore larger numbers to chose from.
• Cost Savings! Flex offers ubiquity to the web browser which guarantees the same look and feel cross platform and cross browsers. Important: This equals HUGE costs savings during the development phase and allows developers to not have to program conditional statements to handle browser specific functionality, styles (CSS), etc…  Overall, it reduces the development lifecycle and ends up becoming a huge value proposition for all envolved.
• Cognos has very expensive licensing attached to it. Use of the Adobe Flex framework and the Flash Player as the platform is comepletly free.
• Faster development with Flex! I created a Yahoo mapping application in Flex that took 4 hours on one weekend.  Most of my time spent on doing this was learning the Yahoo API.  If a “real” developer did it, it would have been much less time spent.
• Great Performance! The Flex framework gets cached at the client and allows users to have a faster experience next time any Flex solution is used.
• Flex does not discriminate and works in any middle-tier (Java, .NET, PHP, ColdFusion, etc…)
• Other frameworks (like many in Ajax) have to use 3rd party libraries to duplicate Flex’s capabilities.  Flex comes baked with 70 componenets that add value to any business looking for amazing capabilties.  The list of components are growing and allow for a continued bright future for Flex.
• If needed, Flex Portlet on any portal solution can live “as is” outside a portal environment with no additional coding requirements because they don’t need to rely on the proprietary Aqualogic framework.

Bottom line, I know this summary is biased.  But it’s biased because of the obvious impact that Flex has (or can have) for any portal environment.  Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems. Flex is based on several versions of the Flash platform and a mature product.  Flex is an easy programming model for all web developers and contains 70 very rich business-focused user interface (UI) components.  Flex can be used as the solution for small or large scale applications including Boeing portal solutions.  Flex technology allows for easy implementation to the desktop for off-line use (the next generation of Web solutions).

Here are a couple of great dashboard examples built using Flex technology:

• http://www.adobe.com/go/flex_dashboard_app
• http://examples.adobe.com/flex3/devnet/dashboard/main.html
• NOTE: Check back for more, this list will grow!