An Architect's View

The library formerly known as clojure.contrib.sql has had its first non-snapshot release.

Features added (above and beyond clojure.contrib.sql):

• returns generated keys for single record inserts
• supports naming strategies to allow you to override the conversion of keywords to/from SQL entity names
• exposes resultset-seq that respects naming strategies
• exposes print-* functions to print SQL exceptions (and no longer prints to *err* on an exception)

You can read more about naming strategies in the clojure.java.jdbc documentation.

If you start using this library with Clojure 1.3.0 and find bugs or think of enhancements, please enter them in the clojure.java.jdbc JIRA bug tracker.

To use clojure.java.jdbc 0.0.1 from Maven or Leiningen, see the clojure.java.jdbc home page on github.

Next week is cf.Objective() 2011 and it's pretty typical of conferences that I've spoken at over the years: heavily focused on developers (and heavily focused on CFML). In July, however, I'm doing something very different and I'm really looking forward to it: D2WC - Designer Developer Workflow Conference!

Accordingly, instead of a technical presentation - often on an advanced subject - I'm going to attempt a truly introductory talk that focuses on how to move from design to a fully functional dynamic web site. I'll be drawing on presentations from AJ Mercer - at last year's cf.Objective(ANZ) - and Daria Norris - at next week's cf.Objective(). I want to thank them for their support of FW/1 and I want to thank Dee Sadler for giving me the opportunity to do something different by letting me speak in Kansas City in mid-July!

The library formerly known as clojure.contrib.sql has a new name and is being updated as part of the ongoing development of Clojure 1.3.0. Since I plan to rely heavily on this within my current CFML project, I'm actively working on clojure.java.jdbc - the new name - and looking for feedback.

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The first annual OpenCF Summit was almost a month ago but I've hardly stopped traveling since and then I got sick! So, finally, here's my thoughts of how this inaugural event went...

The overall impression was one of friendliness, openness and collaboration. From the moment I arrived at the hotel to register, I was immediately swept up in the hackfest where all attendees were able to contribute to an application to help a not-for-profit organize its volunteers. This application grew from a skeleton to a fairly full-featured application with a nice user interface over the course of the summit as various attendees worked on the application. It was great to see such team spirit among attendees, especially since the development environment - Mach II, Open BlueDragon, Google App Engine - was new to most of the contributors!

[Read more →]

My two presentations from the OpenCF Summit are available on my presentations page: CFML and the Open Source Landscape (updated), Open Source Language Evolution (new). The conference team are putting up links to all the presentations as they are made available, via the conference schedule page.

I'll blog my thoughts about the conference in a separate post shortly, possibly on the Railo Technologies blog.

The folks behind the first (and hopefully annual) OpenCF Summit have taken another look at their budget and, after working with a number of partners, have been able to reduce the price of the conference to just $30!

Now the premier event about free open source CFML is almost free! What are you waiting for? Register for this ground-breaking event and learn about what free open source software can do for you (and what you can do to support that movement)!

Happy Holidays!

Whether you've been naughty or nice, you can read all about the new Railo 3.2 release with many community contributions and new core features!

Both cf.Objective() and OpenCF Summit have their call for speakers/proposals open at the moment. Bob Silverberg talks about the cf.Objective() CfP on his blog and you can read about the OpenCF Summit CfP on their blog.

The important thing to note in both cases is that there are calls open: suggestions and proposals. The suggestions page is where you make suggestions about topics you'd like to see at the conference. The proposals page is where you submit yourself as a speaker and describe your proposed topic. Even if you've submitted a suggestion for a topic you'd like to present, you still need to submit a proposal in order to be considered as a speaker!

You need to connect with either your Twitter or Facebook account in order to submit suggestions or proposals - welcome to the social media era! - and proposals are open until early January for both conferences. The OpenCF Summit blog has lots of background information on the "engage" application in use by both conferences, as well as doing a great job of explaining what the OpenCF Summit is all about (hey, you already know what cf.Objective() is all about, right?).

It's now official: I'm speaking at the OpenCF Summit in Garland, TX in February! This will be a unique event in the CF world, with its focus on open source, and it has a lot of interesting types of sessions on the schedule: Pecha Kucha, Open Spaces, Hackfests - as well as regular sessions - and several BOFs and panels!

In addition, many of the OpenCF Summit partners are listed, including Railo Consulting, O'Reilly Media, Packt Publishing, hosting companies and consulting groups.

I think it's one of the most exciting new conferences on the schedule - I hope lots of people will agree and take advantage of this event with it's low price of $199!

The official 1.2 release of Framework One - FW/1 - has just been tagged and published on github. You can download it from RIAForge.

Release Candidate 2 had been out for about a month with no issues reported. A few small enhancements were made since RC2. You can see the list of commits here, on github.