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IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT USING FILEMAKER AND FLASH****
By admin | October 4, 2008
The use of embedded SWF files within a Web Viewer is one of the most exciting and dynamic advances in FileMaker interfaces. However an important change imposed this year by Adobe requires a new approach when using these technologies.
With the introduction of Adobe Flash Player 9,0,124,0, Flash Player will not make a socket connection directly to a server without first obtaining explicit permission from that server. This will require some systems and networks to open up ports or run new services in order to support granting permission.
Because this behavior will be new to system and network administrators, this article provides a brief background on why this process is necessary and what they will see on their networks. In addition, this article includes an overview of sample code that Adobe is providing for creating socket policy file servers in testing environments.
This means previously effective embedded SWFs will no longer be able to receive data from FileMaker Server via a socket connection.
Flash Player has required the presence of socket policy files since the introduction of the feature within Flash Player. Flash Player 9,0,124,0 introduces two major changes to socket policy files. The first change is that Flash Player will require socket policy files for all sockets. In prior versions of Flash Player, it was possible to connect to ports greater than 1024 if the SWF file was connecting to the same server from which it was hosted. The second change is the introduction of a centralized location for socket policy files that can host a socket master policy file.
Adobe has filed with IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, to reserve port 843 for the purposes of serving socket policy files. By introducing a centralized location for socket policy files, Flash Player enables a system administrator to define what ports are available through one master policy that overrides any other policy file on the host. If Flash Player 9,0,124,0 cannot retrieve a master policy file from port 843, then it requests a socket policy file on the port where it is trying to connect. However, if a policy file is available from a service on TCP port 843, then Flash Player considers that to be the authoritative set of permissions for that system.
The fix involves creating a “Socket Policy File” and running it on the server that hosts FileMaker.
For more information on this see: ADOBE SUPPORT
However even if you do not use a socket connection for your application, you may still be experiencing issues with “CROSS DOMAIN” policies.
n 2003, Flash Player 7 software introduced a channel of client-server communication that was new to the web: direct cross-domain data loading, authorized by policy files. Before policy files, web content could only perform two-way communication with its own server, such as runtime configuration or transactions without page reloads. Policy files allowed servers to open up their data selectively to client content from other domains, or generally to content from anywhere. Since the introduction of policy files, domain boundaries have been less of a barrier for authors of rich Internet applications. Like most new technologies, policy files weren’t perfect when they were first introduced. After four years, the Internet security community has found two undesirable situations (described later in this article) that can arise from the existence of policy files. The basic premise of policy files remains valid, and Flash developers can continue to rely on policy files just as they have since Flash 6. To address the new concerns, however, Adobe is specifying some stricter rules for the use of policy files. Additionally, there are a number of improvements that make policy files more useful and usable. You can learn more about how to fix this situation here.
Understanding Flash’s new security restrictions will help you solve any suprise issues with your existing SWF based applications on your network.
Topics: Flash and FileMaker |
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