May 7, 2008
Neil has an
interesting take on Open BlueDragon: he says it makes CFML development easy again and goes on to talk about how the small size of OpenBD and the structure of it allows you to work on packaged applications very, very easily within Eclipse.
May 4, 2008
Adam Haskell has
posted a video showing how to get Open BlueDragon to build / run in Eclipse on Mac OS X. He has also posted a
patch file for the cfEngine.java change.
This change is certainly needed in order to deploy and run OpenBD directly on a server via Eclipse. It may be needed to run outside of that environment. Either way, it's a small change.
In src/com/naryx/tagfusion/cfm/engine/cfEngine.java, around line 607 at the start of setTempDirectory(), you'll see:
tempDirectory = getResolvedFile(systemParameters.getString("server.system.tempdirectory"));
This will fail if the
server.system.tempdirectory property is not defined. Replace that line with:
String tempPath = systemParameters.getString("server.system.tempdirectory");
if (tempPath != null) {
tempDirectory = getResolvedFile(tempPath);
}
Now you should be able to build (choose the
war target of the build/build.xml file) and then do a clean publish to your server (right-click on the server in the Servers view and select Clean... and click OK).
Hit http://localhost:8080/openbd/ (or whatever you set the context root to) and you should be rewarded with the BlueDragon CFML Test Page!
I'll post more detailed notes shortly but I wanted to quickly get a couple of things out there for folks who are trying this.
This post assumes you are carefully following the docs/BuildingDebugging.txt instructions (in the OpenBD source download).
First off, Java on Mac OS X does not have a tools.jar file so you can ignore the step in the OpenBD instructions about setting up the JDK_15_TOOLS class path variable (tools.jar is incorporated directly into the base JDK install on a Mac).
Second, when you import the OpenBD source project, it almost certainly won't let you attach it to a J2EE server (using the Servers view in Eclipse 3.3). This is because it does not have the correct project facets. Right click on your OpenBD project, select Properties, select Project Facets and then Modify Project... Add Java and Dynamic Web Module. Click Finish and then OK. Now you should be able to add the OpenBD project to your chosen server.
You may have duplicate libraries at this point (Vince did and I did but that may be due to attempting to build it without setting up the facets properly). Right click on your OpenBD project, select Properties, select Java Build Path and look at the Libraries tab - if you have duplicates, you'll get a red error message at the top, and you just need to delete the duplicates.
At that point, you'll need one source code change to get it to run. I'll cover that in a separate post.
May 3, 2008
Vince Bonfanti hosted a Birds of a Feather session this evening where he officially unveiled the
Open BlueDragon project.
[More]
Brian Meloche has
posted more details about his presentation as it didn't make it into the conference booklet. He's talking about
using ColdFusion for technology integration and, based on the reception my talk about "enterprise integration" got a few years back, this should be a very well-received talk. Brian definitely knows his stuff in this area and has real-world experience to share.
Nic Tunney's massively popular session, An Intelligent Approach to OOP in CF Architecture, will be repeated on Sunday in the SU4A slot. Nic's colleague Samer Sadek will be presenting this repeat as Nic has to leave early. We knew early on that Nic's talk was popular enough to repeat but had not been able to confirm a stand-in speaker to present it on Sunday. Thank you Samer for stepping up!
This repeat replaces the planned repeat of Hal's Introduction to OO Modeling talk.
May 2, 2008
Mark Drew will be presenting an Introduction to ColdSpring on Saturday in the SA5A slot at 2:40pm as Hal Helms is unable to attend the conference. Thank you Mark for volunteering at the last minute - and we're all hoping Hal feels better soon.
There are two networks accessible in the meeting rooms. Please join the guest access network and do not switch back and forth to the meeting room network - the hotel DHCP system doesn't release leases very quickly so it is slowing down because it's accruing so many clients duplicated across both networks.
If you haven't already seen
Ray Camden's blog, he has joined Broadchoice as our VP of Software Development and we're very excited to have Ray as part of our team!
Ray and I have been working together on the new Broadchoice platform for the last few months, initially both as consultants. We both feel Broadchoice is doing something unique, something special and that this is a great move for both of us - and ultimately for a lot of developers out there.
Watch this space!
May 1, 2008
Hal Helms hasn't been feeling too well and will not be arriving at cf.Objective() until some time on Friday. This means we'll be swapping his session (FR1A) with Dan Wilson's Saturday session (SA5A - Refactoring).
We have swapped these two sessions on the website schedule as well as in the online scheduler.
Please visit the online scheduler to reconfirm your schedule if you were planning to attend either of these sessions.
April 30, 2008
Adobe just announced it is
opening up the SWF and FLV/F4V formats amongst other initiatives for the Open Screen Project. This aims to bring Flash Player ubiquity to all devices, large and small - and, in due course, AIR as well. The list of partners is very impressive and includes chip and phone manufacturers, network companies, content providers...
The latest software update for Mac OS X 10.5.2 adds Java 1.6.0_05 but does not change your default setup. See
this tech note for more details.
I haven't yet switched to Java 6 as my default JRE but I will shortly. Happy to hear any early feedback from folks.
April 26, 2008
Mark Mandel just published the
release notes for the upcoming 1.0 Release Candidate of Transfer. You can see just how busy he's been lately. The 1.0 RC should be available any day now - in time for
cf.Objective() 2008 where Mark will give an introduction to developing applications using Transfer as well as an advanced talk on the caching machinery in Transfer.
April 25, 2008
If you are attending one of the four two-hour hands-on workshops at
cf.Objective() 2008, you will want to read this so that you can have your laptop prepared in advance:
Workshop Prequisites for cf.Objective() 2008
This document will continue to be updated between now and the conference but this should help you get ready for your workshop session.
COLDFUSION 8 AJAX - ASHWIN MATHEW
5/21/08 6:30 PM
Adobe San Francisco - Kojak
Connect URL: http://experts.acrobat.com/bacfug
Former Adobe ColdFusion product team member, Ashwin Mathew, will talk about how to leverage the power of and other gems in the AJAX features introduced in ColdFusion 8.
601 Townsend St, San Francisco, California 94103
The Kojak conference room is in lobby but you still need security clearance (so you must RSVP!).
RSVP for this meeting.
April 24, 2008
Fred Anderson is
blogging about things to see and do while you're in town for
cf.Objective() 2008. Thanx Fred!
Haven't registered for the conference yet? It's only a week away but you can still sign up. It's the best value ColdFusion content anywhere on the planet!
April 23, 2008
I figured this event deserves a much broader audience. If you haven't attended an Online ColdFusion Meetup event, this would be a good place to start.
Announcing a new meeting for The Online ColdFusion Meetup Group!
What: "Cleveland CFUG Simulcast: cf.Objective() Preview", with 3 Speakers
When: Thursday, Apr 24, 6:00pm US EDT (GMT-5) (What time is that for you? See this link which shows the time as US EDT and you can choose your city from the list offered to see it in your own time.)
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The final two repeat sessions on Sunday have been selected. The next most popular topics are Jason Delmore's "
Building Hybrid Applications with ColdFusion and Java" and Michael Collins' "
Deploying into Large Scale ColdFusion Environments", both Adobe topics.
In addition, we've had to move a few sessions around on Sunday to accommodate speakers' travel arrangements. Josh Adams' talk on .NET has swapped with Sanjeev Kumar's talk on PDF. In order to ensure the two .NET talks do not conflict, we've swapped the rest of the first two slots. Mostly that means that the session choices in each slot haven't changed so, hopefully, attendees' choices won't need to change either.
Please take a look at the revised schedule and, if necessary, update your selections in the online scheduler.
See you in just over a week!
April 22, 2008
Go on... you know you want to...
An Engineer's Guide To Cats.
April 17, 2008
Nolan Erck came down from Sacramento to give us an excellent introductory talk about ColdFusion Components and Object-Oriented terminology. If you missed it, you can
watch the recording (which is also posted on Charlie Arehart's
UGTV).
April 16, 2008
Popular Mechanics has published a
very interesting comparison of Apple desktop and laptop performance compared to equivalent PC equipment. In almost all cases the Mac outperformed its PC partner and scored higher ratings in user tests as well.
The review is interesting because it compares similar hardware (easier now Macs run on Intel chips) performing similar tasks. Leopard scored higher than Vista in usability and performance. Running Vista on Macs also scored higher in performance in almost all cases (than running Vista on PCs).
It's worth reading all four pages of the review and looking in detail at the specs - and the prices, which gives lie to the long-standing myth that Macs are more expensive. The laptops, whilst slightly different specs, are the same price and the Mac desktop is $300 cheaper than the similar Gateway used in the test.
April 15, 2008
I just got word from Liz at TeraTech that my
Event-Driven Programming in ColdFusion talk has proved popular enough that it will be repeated on Saturday (yes, CFUNITED has posted its Saturday schedule!).
So come along and hear me talk at 1:30pm on Thursday (6/19) or 8:30am on Saturday (6/21)!
As is traditional, CFUNITED is publishing brief interviews with all of their speakers. My interview
about event-driven programming in ColdFusion has just been published today. I mention Edmund briefly and I'll be blogging more about that in due course. Since the interviewed was "recorded" I have indeed started using Edmund at Broadchoice to manage the workflows in our scheduled tasks.
