An Architect's View

The last week has seen some big announcements in the CF world! On March 31st, Gert announced the open source release of Railo, the next day Mark Drew announced he has joined Railo as CEO of the new Railo UK and then this week Peter Bell announced that he has also joined Railo and will be heading up the new Railo US operation. I've been using ColdFusion since 2001, back when I worked at Macromedia and my team of Java and C++ developers first encountered CFML in the form of very early builds of what went on to become CFMX (6.0). We were pretty skeptical at first.

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As "usual", I start the year with a round-up of the highlights of last year, based on things that I blogged. It's been a strange year for me. After (seven) years with Macromedia / Adobe and most of 2007 spent freelancing, I took a full-time job with a startup and hired some amazing CFers to be part of my team. I (finally) learned Flex (and AIR). I learned a new language (Groovy) and did a lot less CFML programming than I've done in years while at the same time joining first the Open BlueDragon Steering Committee and then the CFML Advisory Committee, as well as attending more ColdFusion-related conferences than usual (cf.Objective(), Scotch on the Rocks, CFUNITED, Wee Dram of Scotch, MAX).

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Michael Sprague has created a nice set of custom tags that use jQuery to provide alternatives for cfgrid, cfwindow and cftooltip. Currently a "prerelease", this will become a RIAforge project in due course. Another example of the power and simplicity of jQuery. (via Vince Bonfanti's blog)

Note: Vince updated his post to use more neutral language - thank you Vince! - so I have updated this post to be more neutral as well.

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Vince Bonfanti just announced New Atlanta's "new ColdFusion-to-.NET and ColdFusion-to-Java migration services." and goes on to say "As experts in ColdFusion, ASP.NET, and Java technologies, New Atlanta is uniquely positioned to assist organizations that want to migrate their ColdFusion applications to either the ASP.NET or Java EE web application platforms." Vince has said in the past that he sees BlueDragon.NET as a migration path from CFML to .NET so this isn't entirely surprising. His blog now has a sidebar that consolidates links to posts he's made in the past three years on this topic (the posts span July 2005 to January 2008 so they're not exactly "news"). It's clear that Vince and New Atlanta are going in a very different direction to Open BlueDragon. Vince is not involved with OpenBD and it is TagServlet, not New Atlanta, who are behind the open source project. ColdFusion continues to thrive under Adobe's leadership - the hints around Centaur suggest that it will be a mind-blowing release. Open BlueDragon is available now for download - in several ready-2-run formats, as a simple WAR or even in source code form for you to use for free in pretty much any way you want. And at Scotch on the Rocks, Railo announced their partnership with Red Hat to move the Railo CFML engine to jboss.org as an open source project which should extend the reach of CFML into the Java community. It's never been a better time to be a CF developer - more choices, more advances.

Vince Bonfanti hosted a Birds of a Feather session this evening where he officially unveiled the Open BlueDragon project.

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This time it's me in the spotlight, interviewed by Alan Williamson. Previous interview victims have been Mike Brunt, Peter Amiri and Andy Allan. Keep you eye on Alan's blog for interviews with the remaining members of the Open BlueDragon Steering Committee. Don't forget that cf.Objective() 2008 is the first place to get your hands on Open BlueDragon where Vince will launch the project to the public and a number of the OpenBD Steering Committee members will be present to answer your questions.

This year's cf.Objective() has a lot of firsts. If you're not attending, you're going to miss out on a lot of world premier events! We've worked hard to make cf.Objective() 2008 a "must see" event. We have a number of firsts this year that we're very proud of:

• The public release of Open BlueDragon on May 3rd!
• The public unveiling - and Alpha - of Model-Glue 3: Gesture!
• The public unveiling of Mate, the new Flex framework from AsFusion!
• The first conference to feature the latest rising star in the frameworks world: ColdBox - with an introductory session and a two hour, hands-on advanced workshop!
• The first public information about Swiz, the new Flex framework from Chris Scott of ColdSpring fame!
• Speaking of Chris Scott, we're the first conference to feature a two-hour, hands-on workshop for ColdSpring!
• We're also the first conference to feature a two-hour, hands-on workshop on agile development for ColdFusion developers by the leading light in automated process & testing, John Paul Ashenfelter!

How can you pass this up? $629 for three full days of brain-cramming, enterprise-level information in a hotel that's only $120 a night! Register Now! The room rate is only guaranteed for a few more days! If you're a Mach-II user - or thinking of using Mach-II - you might also be interested in the pre-conference classes.

Alan Williamson introduces the members of the Open BlueDragon Steering Committee in a post today that includes quotes from each committee member about their hopes for the project.

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Alan Williamson just announced that the BlueDragon open source project has an official name: Open BlueDragon, or OpenBD for short. The steering committee has also created a public mailing list for discussing all things related to the project.

Dan Wilson conducted a great interview with Vince Bonfanti about BlueDragon going open source, published on dzone. The release date for BlueDragon Open Source is May 3rd at cf.Objective(). Register for cf.Objective() and be one of the first to see the project "in the flesh"! Come along to the BOF and ask Vince all about the whys and wherefores of the project and New Atlanta's decision to go open source (assuming Dan's interview doesn't answer your questions). Alan Williamson has also posted about the steering committee and the process for getting involved.