It's a month since CFUnited and I haven't yet posted my thoughts on the conference. I started writing but it turned into an essay and I'm not sure it's worth posting in its entirety, especially since many others have posted their reviews (mostly all glowing - and rightly so!). I will post a brief review of the conference soon - it's on my Things to-do list and everything on that list gets done (eventually).

The other overdue blog post on my Things to-do list covers what it was like to be a sponsor at CFUnited. A first for me (sort of). I've been attending (and speaking) at CFUnited since it was CFUN'04 (when I covered the use of Mach-II at Macromedia). Sure, Macromedia and Adobe have been regular sponsors but that is the ColdFusion product team and I was going independently as part of another team - the joys of a big company - so I never felt I was a sponsor (I never worked for the ColdFusion product team - even tho' a lot of people seem to think I did!). This year - 2009 - Railo was a silver sponsor of CFUnited and so I spent quite a bit of time around the Railo "booth" talking to attendees.

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I've talked about the CFML Advisory Committee before and explained that we're working on a specification for the ColdFusion Markup Language that we hope to release this year as CFML2009 and then review every two years.

CFML2009 is intended to be a specification of what the language should be by the end of this year. Ben Forta just posted about some CFML enhancements coming soon in ColdFusion 9 but he didn't mention that many of these will be embodied in the CFML2009 spec.

I figured it was worth looking at some of the items in his blog post through the lens of the Advisory Committee. Where these features are deemed "core" by the Advisory Committee, expect all CFML engines to provide them fairly quickly. Some features are supported already by one or more vendor, some are new to all three vendors.

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It's been a while since I posted anything formally about the committee and I've started to see it mentioned in comments on blogs and on mailing lists lately so I feel now is a good time to update everyone on where we are, what we're currently working on and what we're trying to achieve.

First off, you can always check out the CFML Advisory Committee website. We're updating it as we finalize our decisions but it can be a slow process since this is the first time any group has tried to agree on a specification for the ColdFusion Markup Language.

Over the last few weeks, the committee has been pretty active...

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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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A lot of people have asked about OpenBD being represented on the CFML Advisory Committee since the original announcement at CFUNITED 2008. I'm pleased to announce that today Matt Woodward joined the committee, representing the OpenBD CFML engine. We now have the three major CFML engines represented on the committee: Adobe ColdFusion, Railo and Open BlueDragon.

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I'm working on a specification suite with Pat Santora, who recently joined the Edmund Event-Driven Model project as a contributor (more on that shortly), and we're using cfSpec to define the expected behavior of Edmund.

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If you have ColdFusion installed in the multiserver configuration (which is the only way I ever install it!), it's easy to also install Railo on top of JRun in the same setup.

With ColdFusion in multiserver configuration, you have:

In that directory is META-INF/, containing application.xml, and cfusion-war/, containing the ColdFusion instance itself.

Download the Railo 3.0.2 WAR file (at the bottom of the downloads page) and unpack the WAR file to a directory called railo-war. You can use jar xvf or rename the .war to .zip and just unzip it. Your railo-war/ directory should now contain WEB-INF/, index.cfm and License.txt.

Now move that railo-war/ directory into the cfusion-ear/ directory mentioned above (so it's next to the cfusion-war/ directory.

Finally, edit that application.xml file and copy the <module> definition for cfusion-war and change it to say railo-war for the web-uri and /railo for the context-root.

Start ColdFusion and you'll see it starts both application servers. http://localhost/index.cfm is Adobe ColdFusion and http://localhost/railo/index.cfm is Railo CFML.

If you write frameworks (like I do), this makes it easier to test across multiple engines.

I'll probably stick Open BlueDragon 1.0.1 in there next.

The same process works for the OpenBD WAR file.

Caveats:

1. For OpenBD, I had to add an Apache alias for /openbd to match the location of the exploded WAR so that images loaded correctly (in the shiny new OpenBD Administrator - nice job guys!).

2. For both Railo and OpenBD, I experienced some problems with xmlParse() - OpenBD in particular said "The configured XML parser does not support JAXP 1.3."

The solution to the second problem was to add the following to java.args in jvm.config:

(all on one line, no space after the =)

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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This week has seen my focus shift back from ActionScript / Groovy to ColdFusion, although not specifically programming in CFML. A couple of blogs have been buzzing about the pros and cons (and plain ol' whys) of running ColdFusion in the cloud, such as on Amazon's EC2 service. Obviously you can run Open BlueDragon or Railo without worrying about cost but for many people, only Adobe ColdFusion will really do what they need and the current EULA does not really accommodate that (partly because the "per 2 CPU" aspect doesn't cover the Amazon situation where you simply don't know how many physical CPUs you actually have!).

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I was just reading a couple of blog posts about deploying Open BlueDragon in the cloud (I started with Matt Woodward's extended blog post on cloud computing) and they've gone as far as integrating OpenBD into Elastic Server - a service that lets you easily configure a server instance based on a number of resources. Very impressive.

Broadchoice Workspace is deployed on the cloud and whilst most of the machinery is Java/Groovy behind the Flex/AIR application, we also have the iPhone-compatible web version which is powered by CFML. It's a Model-Glue 3 / ColdSpring application that reuses the core Groovy services (via a Spring adapter that Joe Rinehart wrote).

So we've been running CFML in the cloud in production for nearly two months now and it's working out really well for us. We're using Railo 3.0, another option for cloud computing.

Adobe have said that cloud deployment is something they want to make possible with ColdFusion so at some point we'll have an embarrassment of riches in terms of choices for CFML in the cloud.

Who else is using CFML in the cloud today? Who is thinking about doing so?

New Atlanta's BlueDragon project has never supported Flash Remoting but with the advent of BlazeDS being open sourced by Adobe, TagServlet's OpenBD project has been able to take advantage of the synergy of open source to offer both HTTPService and RemoteObject invocation of CFCs from Flash/Flex. Watch Matt Woodward's screencast showing how to set up and run Flash Remoting with Open BlueDragon.

Vince's post stirred up an interesting discussion on the OpenBD Steering Committee mailing list and unveiled Alan Williamson's true feelings about the CF community and many of the people I know, like and respect.

I had expressed concerns about the CF community's negative feelings for New Atlanta affecting the perception of Open BlueDragon but Alan doesn't care about that because, well, Alan doesn't really care about the CF community. He cares about CFML and he cares about BlueDragon and OpenBD. But he has his sights set on the Java community - his "old neighborhood" - and views the people there as the "real rock stars". He's "sick and tired of hearing about the 'CF community'". He feels the "so called 'rock stars' within the CF community are just a lot of empty vessels".

I'm disappointed. I really hoped OpenBD was a fresh start and a clean break from New Atlanta (and it is - Alan was very emphatic that New Atlanta have had no influence over OpenBD and that it's driven entirely by TagServlet Ltd and the steering committee). But in light of Alan's feelings about the CF community, I feel I have no option but to step away from the project.

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.

Alan Williamson continues his blog series with an article explaining how to write new CFML tags using the Plugin API, which lets you extend the functionality of OpenBD without changing the core code.

I'm hoping to get back to working on OpenBD more seriously over the next few weeks and several of the steering committee will be at Scotch on the Rocks next week.

Some sound bite interviews with speakers about what they're looking forward to at CFUNITED this year. Open BlueDragon gets several mentions as the "hot topic" for various speakers. And we're all looking forward to beer. Except Sandy who prefers red wine.

If you're an IRC fan, there are two channels on chat.freenode.net: #openbd for discussion of the OpenBD project and #cfml-lang for discussion of CFML itself.

Why freenode instead of dal.net (home of #coldfusion etc)?

Well, freenode is home to #ruby, #rubyonrails, #groovy as well as all the Smalltalk and Haskell channels. Given the nature of OpenBD, it seemed more appropriate to put the channels on freenode.

The OpenBD website now has a blog where the latest project news will be posted by members of the steering committee. It has already been aggregated by feed-squirrel.

SixSigns have published a VMWare image containing Open BlueDragon on Tomcat with MySQL preconfigured for folks to download and play with. It will run on the free VMWare Player as well as VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X. It's a good way to get started with Open BlueDragon without needing to change your existing development environment.

An Open BlueDragon AMI is available on Amazon which is built on Cent OS and uses Jetty. I haven't tried this yet but wanted to spread the word for those who are using Amazon to run images.

The MXUnit team have posted instructions on how to get OpenBD running on Tomcat and JBoss. Another useful resource. The MXUnit team have committed to having MXUnit running on OpenBD (which means removing some strange ColdFusion-specific Java code).

Per Kleven has posted instructions for setting up a centralized installation where you have a single set of OpenBD files shared across multiple web applications on Tomcat.

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.

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:

This will fail if the server.system.tempdirectory property is not defined. Replace that line with: 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.

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.

Vince Bonfanti will be presenting a Birds of a Feather session at cf.Objective() 2008 on the Open Source BlueDragon project.

New Atlanta are working hard to make an initial source code drop available, especially for cf.Objective(), so that Vince can show how to download, install, build and configure the project - and field questions about New Atlanta's thinking behind open sourcing the J2EE edition of BlueDragon, as well as discussing with the community how the project can move forward, how the license works, how the steering committee operates and so on.

If you're excited about New Atlanta's recent announcement - or even just curious about how such a large open source project might work for the CF community - be sure to attend this Birds of a Feather session on Saturday evening at 7:30pm. The schedule shows it running an hour but I expect this will need more than an hour so I currently plan to keep the 8:30pm slot open immediately afterward to allow for an extended Q&A session.

Vince Bonfanti has posted a good explanation of several of the details and implications of opening up BlueDragon. I was pleased to see him call out my blog post about the announcement! Hopefully his post will clarify a lot of the misconceptions I've seen expressed in a number of discussions.

Vince points folks to the new Open Source forum on the New Atlanta website which has a lot of good information about the details of dual licensing, the expected process for contributions and so on.

I strongly encourage folks to read Vince's post and then read all the threads in the forum.

In a move that has surprised some folks, New Atlanta has announced plans to create a free open source version of their J2EE BlueDragon product. They will continue to develop, sell and support a commercial version of it, as well as continuing the .NET version and the standalone JX version (neither of which will be open sourced).

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