flex development process

okay, i was starting to get confused by the whole flex-application architecture thing, but i think this section from wikipedia makes things clearer:

Flex Application Development Process

Everything below is directly sourced from the help file in version 2.0 Beta 3:

• Define an application interface using a set of pre-defined components (forms, buttons, and so on)
• Arrange components into a user interface design
• Use styles and themes to define the visual design
• Add dynamic behavior (one part of the application interacting with another, for example)
• Define and connect to data services as needed
• Build the source code into an SWF file that runs in the Flash Player

does this mean that i don't need to have some sort of flex application running on the web server since it's already compiled into a swf before deployment? i'll try and write a simple flex application and see if the compiled swf file runs on charlie then post my results here.