SOSensible Blog

CF OS Blue(Dragon)s

2008-12-03T00:00:00-06:00

Well, it isn't quite CFUnited when many hoped to see the product go 1.0 but it is here and an impressive first product.

Here are some of the new features and a few comments.

Admin Console: No more editing of the configuration file, every aspect of the engine available through a fully functional administration console. (Note: Originally this was not planned for this release... this will be appreciated.)
CFSMTP: Build applications that respond to email coming in on Port25 immediately. No polling
CFIMAP: Access IMAP servers from your CFML application
Amazon SimpleDB: Need to utilise Amazon's SimpleDB? Then simply use CFQUERY! (Note: This will be interesting to get reviews on!)
Amazon S3: Push files up and down to Amazon's popular S3 service with extreme ease (This is in Railo in some way also, wonder if it's equal here. Also... will we see this in ColdFusion now?)
Memcache: Utilise this popular high performance caching layer deep within your CFML code
render(): Render full blocks of CFML code on-the-fly; think Evaluate(.) but for tags
CFCACHECONTENT / CacheXXX(): Full caching layer to let you really control what gets cached
CFMULTICAST: Lets you send and receive multicast packets
CFXMLRPC: Quickly consume remote XML-RPC services

There is more information on the OpenBD.org site and a WIKI.

Great Myths of Software Development

2008-12-02T00:00:00-06:00

We will look at 3 Great Myths in this post.

Objects cannot be expressed with tag based markup.
Design Patterns are patterns
High Level Languages are not pragmatic

Myth 1: Objects cannot be expressed with tag based markup.

Objects exist after a compliler has translated class based text code into compiled classes that are created as instances in running software. ColdFusion in version 6 introduced it's development community to standard objects based on the common code of that version. Historically we see that most languages create objects with script based code but this is not always the case. There are many types of objects out there. One of the most common type of ojbects is known as DOM these are the objects created with HTML markup. Language libraries like EXTJS seem to have found sweet spot solutions for letting JS developers create DOM with script. Both seem to work well and it is mostly a matter of style.

Now with that said, the JS vs HTML dom objects are equal. As time has passed and we have learned there are ways to design objects that interface together effectively. In electronics technology there are messaging packet standards that allow these physical entities to communicate with each other via messaging standards. They still need common interfaces but the messaging packets are essential. In software we tend to focus more on interface and the developer has to know more about the unique message packets they send in and take out. Because of this we find that one thing that makes integration more reliable is Unit Testing. Over time we have learned that Unit Testing is a two point test. We must test input and output. In reality Unit Testing doesn't care what goes on inside an object as long as it accepts the input and when appropriate returns the proper output. When we look at tags vs script again there is not change here in which is better.

Myth 2 : Design Patterns are patterns

Design Patterns are better thought of as generic principles that solve generic problems. There is a great deal of confusion that comes from the belief that design patterns are like a mold used to cut out holiday cookies. Principles don't change but the implementation of the principles does from one use to the next. If we add red to a white cookie we get something on the scale of pink to red. If we add it to a blue cookie we move to purple. That is just a principled illustration and like design patterns it only illustrates the difference between the cookie and the color. Design patterns are great things to understand and there is even a pattern called Anti-Pattern. This is not a specific pattern but the principle of learning where design patterns work wrong and make things worse. Therefore we can see that the study of design patterns is not meant to be rigid but a relaxed use of principles to improve software through good understanding of ways object oriented code can be created.

Myth 3 : High Level Languages are not pragmatic

Funny is the chant of a Java developer who would chide a high level language like ColdFusion. Then he turns around and promotes Spring or Hibernate. Often low level languages are so daunting that they create high level libraries to encapsulate common processes. A high level language is just a language that has these type of features packaged not only as a library but integrated into the commands built into a platform. If the language remains extensible and allows continued encapsulation like the lower level languages then it is actually out of the box the most pragmatic solution to be acquired.

Beyond the CFConversation Podcast

2008-10-21T00:00:00-06:00

If you are tunning into the Frameworks podcasts you will hear lots of interesting perspective on frameworks. If you are smart you will figure out that the one size fits all mentiality is not one of understanding. Choosing a framework that works for everyone is like choosing a vehicle that works for everyone. Imagine if everyone had to drive a truck or everyone had to drive a sub-compact car! One more thought would be should we all have hammers or should we all have nail guns? Obviously we need different tools for different jobs.

So first you may want to check out the podcasts. One was released last week end and one will be released next week end. ( http://www.cfconversations.com/ )

Next you may want to read about things happening outside of the CF realm. One good example is an article on SitePoint about a new application installer by Microsoft. This new solution lets you install open source applications on your web site. Hmmm... seems like the marketing department at even Microsoft has figured out the way to reach the public is to sell them on being able to install applications on the web site in an easy fashion. Yes, technical structure is a good benefit to any web site. Yet inside our community it seems (as you will hear on the podcasts) that a number of the vendors focus on being a 'control based framework'. Can anyone tell me if you would like to try to sell the management of your company on why a controller based framework offers more benefit than a solution that installs your choice of applications in an automated fashion? Yes, I know we coders are generally geeks but business doesn't make money because we are technically superior alone!

Now with that said let me say there are times where I will understand others may not want to use SOS as the solution of choice. We focus on the problem from more of a business centric view and then we also look at technical considerations. In about a week the beta 2 release of SOS will be uploaded for the public or developers that is to play with for a short season. We are getting very close to a full release of the product.

SOS Overview

Business Centric
Application Installer
Shared Authentication
Robust API
Supports coding in multiple methodologies
ADS (Approchable, DRY as in don't repeat yourself, and Sustainable) Standards
Active Schema
... more to follow
- documentation
- screen cast tutorials
- business overview (so the boss will understand)
- etc.

Now if anyone needs some consulting assistance just let us know and we will see what we can do to help you out.

What is the OOP Flu?

2008-09-22T00:00:00-06:00

Well... first let me say I am not against good OOP any more than I am against birds. When we had the big discussion about the bird Flu my thought is the birds need a cure. I share the same thoughts about the guys who are not just users and teachers of OOP but they have the common symptoms of the OOP Flu.

Symptoms:

uncontrolled craving to use only objects
delusional thinking that objects make 'everything' better (result of symptom 1)
they explain how objects make development easier followed by a speech of learning one thing at a time because the concepts are hard to understand
preaching about the evils of spaghetti code followed by a sermon on the benfits of connecting objects with wired solutons (isn't that wired mess behind the desk called spaghetti also? unless of course you use a Mac laptop... but that would lead to the wireless concepts.... NOOOooo... will the analogies ever end!) LOL
anti-social behavior
- belligerent speech (calling people who aren't of the same mind names to slur character of other views)
- suggesting to employers such people are not good developers (of course ignoring how may big names who suffer from the flu were known as great developers before contracting the sickness)

We could go on helping you spot these sick types but more of what is needed is to cure them. We don't want to end up contracting a similar sickness trying to cure them. Above all we need to learn something we learned (or should have) during the 'Bird Flu'. We are still eating birds... we can survive this threat to our social order. We need to benefit from OO development even if some people apparently have gotten the 'OOP Flu'.

Here are some tips on how to avoid getting the OOP Flu.

respect your neighbor like you would like to be respected
remember these guys 10 years ago were not likely doing OOP, and who knows what they will be doing in 10 years!
don't believe what you don't understand without 'reason', and remember above all that charisma is not reason (aka... beware of the pied pipers)
walk and don't run, learn this either in a dedicated class (Hal Helms offers some, and I get nothing for the plug) or take your time.
Sean C. stated there are tradeoffs. (This means that OO in and of itself doesn't make things 'better'... you get benefits at a price and need to evaluate the exchange)
You don't need to do OO or ( alternative )... normally OO mixes quite nicely with other concepts hand and hand.
In time you may learn to do the same thing as those who suffer from the 'OOP Flu'... but without contracting the Flu... you should be doing OO because of reasons, not religion! OO doesn't make you a better person because you are a 'purist'. :)

Heres to your health!

John Farrar

SOS v5 goes into beta

2008-09-11T00:00:00-06:00

This is beta 1 of a complete 100% rewrite of SOS. We have made things simpler... but that doesn't mean you will just download it and get it. We are going to be doing some online presentations and with that you will get it so easy it will blow your mind how much ColdFusion can do for us. Pardon me those who are the ultra OO guys, but though we use objects in SOS for the benefits there is a way to program ColdFusion without trying to imitate Java. (ducking the flames that will follow that comment.)

Stay tuned and we will be putting streaming videos online. You will find links either here or on http://sos.riaforge.com where our project AND the download are waiting for you. The QnA for the beta will be on the blog on that site so be sure to keep up to date there.

CF 8 Tag Poster

2008-09-05T00:00:00-06:00

Yes you can get one of these handy dandy posters! (Well, that is what we are told if we fill out a survey.)

Poster Survey Link

ColdFusion Free NOW to Educators

2008-09-03T00:00:00-06:00

Kristen Schofield gives the details at length, but here is the short version of it. Now faculty can easily integrate ColdFusion into their curriculum and enable students to advance their Web application learning more quickly and easily. I might add that if they are looking for books there is a 3 book set and there is my 'tutorial' book reviewed here for education.

Availability: Adobe ColdFusion 8 is now available free for download to eligible students and educators through https://freeriatools.adobe.com/coldfusion.ColdFusion 8 integrates with a broad range of platforms and systems. It's supported on the leading J2EE application servers and natively integrates Java, .Net, Microsoft Exchange Server, web services and more. For more detailed information about ColdFusion 8, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/.

*This free offering of ColdFusion 8 is for learning purposes only and not applicable to educational institutions using ColdFusion in production environments.

Next Gen Browsers

2008-09-01T00:00:00-06:00

OK... we could talk about individual features but that isn't going to help us understand what the driving features are in the next generation features of browsers. IE and Mozilla tend to be leading the way with IE 8 and the Mozilla Ubiquity project. In a nutshell it's about user controlled collaboration. It is about the user controlling integration and information in his own way.

So, what is the point? Next generation web sites should be thinking the way next generation browsers are headed. Does your site allow users to gather information and use it in a friendly collaborative way? How easy is it for them to pick pieces of information and share in a social network of choice? We have a project on RiaForge called cfOpenSocial. Send me a message if this is something you are interested in helping get to the community as an itnegrated library running in ColdFusion. If not look at what others are doing and make sure your site isn't going to be viewed as 'anti-social'.

Yes, the next features of the browser focus on two major concepts. They focus on being social and collaboration. Of course change helps keep us IT guys working... so in addition to giving more to the users that is good for us!

ADS Technology Ratings

2008-08-28T00:00:00-06:00

This is a new standard that we at SOSensible are promoting. It is our creation and we find it very helpful. Let's get right into the explaination.

A - Accessible Technology

Technology should be used to make things more approachable. It's not just about what it can do but how it does it. I can remember growing up when we used to get out the slide projector or we would be in a public meeting and they would get out the movie projector and load in the media. This is nothing like today when we drop in a plastic disc to a player and hook a cable up to the projector or screen. We have taken many technology advances and wrapped them up into something that is clearly more approachable. Well, we should be doing the same thing in our code. Yes, there may be 'technical' arguments for why a complicated system may be a better solution. Yet, what often happens is the the common developer finds the code to difficult to follow and maintain. This can be because it has been written with spagghetti weaving of logic or because it has been written with design patterns that make sense technically but can not only make it less approachable but less sustainable if the correct tallent is not available. A good policy would be hire the technical superiour developer to come in and simplify the maintenance of the application.

D - DRY

This stands for "Don't Repeat Yourself". If we package up our logic that we use over and over then we can reuse it rather than rewrite or paste and edit it over and over. This is called encapsulation and it also has some other benefits. It allows for testing of the reused components and elements. Testing can make applications even more stable because it is tested. When updates are done regression testing will make sure none of the former tests are broken by bug fixes or enhancements. There is one more common advantage we have found. It often happens that because we eliminate redundant time consuming work and our code is packaged we find some common feature we would like to have but never get to can be added to this DRY package. This means because we develop DRY it often provides for extended features. (NOTE: jQuery, Prototype and other AJAX libraries are examples of programming DRY.)

S - Sustainable

It follows that normally just making things more approachable and DRY will make them more sustainable. Yet, that is not all that is needed. This could be an entire session or seminar for that matter. I will just say that (A) or (D) should never be done to the exclusion of being sustainable. All of these should be considered together and a decision made based on what implementation is being used.

- - - - - - - - -

Well, I hope that gives people an idea of what DRY is. We do project consulting also if anyone needs any help. You can email us at ... info (-at symbol-) sosensible.com and we will see how we can help.

Ears and Eyes for AIR

2008-08-18T00:00:00-06:00

There are a number of ways to watch what goes on between an AIR application and the server. Yes the built in debugging is nice, but that doesn't tell us about what the AIR application says to other HTTP servers and what they answer back. There are a number of solutions to make this easier.

1. Fiddler This is a free dotNet solution.

2. Service Capture Paid for Solution. 35 bucks.

Both of these solutions are nice. Sorry Mac friends, but you will have to let me know what the solutions are for a Mac. This should get you talking with the CF server or what ever server you might be using.

Happy with Amazon

2008-08-05T00:00:00-06:00

Well, at least they make my book look like it is selling. Funny thing about being an author is no one seems to trust the author to know how his book is doing! Go figure, eh? Either way it looks like Amazon has another set of my books on order according to yesterday's book page. Another nice thing was when the secret to getting my blog on the page was finally revealed. This post should appear there also. It looks like they figure the sales statistics hour by hour. Thus far we have approached the famous Forta books several times and come right up to position 2. The books are slightly different in focus and pulling a strong two to all ColdFusion books over and over time to time is a great thing to me. Hope the books are doing well helping others also.

ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial on Amazon

DynaCloud or Automated Tag Lists

2008-07-19T00:00:00-06:00

Well, since we started working on SEO tools this is one of the type of things we are looking to do. I am not sure this specifically will be added to our library but it is worth looking at for the grand scope and power of tools. (Esp. since this weeks blogs have been full of jQuery stuff. ) Check out this page for details and examples. It is actually some very amazing concepts wrapped up into this plugin.

DynaCloud Plugin

I am looking at doing it this way or considering what it might take to do the same thing in ColdFusion. Of course there is one other issue that we are looking at building some of our tools as AIR applications. This means they may not need ColdFusion for this part of the application at all. (That is scary... imagine building something outside the power of ColdFusion?)

Context AJAX Popup Menus

2008-07-17T00:00:00-06:00

OK, getting context menus and popup content sensitive information is great... but how do you make it pretty easy? Well, I don't know about you but this seems pretty easy to me! We are putting this into our test queue and looking at making another ICE element with it.

Context Menus with jQuery

I got Twittered

2008-07-15T00:00:00-06:00

OK... sometimes it's easier to twitter to keep your friends updated and to stay updated than it is to IM, email, phone call... and more. So this could be good.

Me on Twitter

Oh, for those developers like me who want to play with the API you can use chapter 14 in my CFDT to help out. Twitter uses REST based services and it is a great way to network from a IT view.

OO Perspective from Hal

2008-07-12T00:00:00-06:00

There is a great blog post about the social divide of OO developer evangelism and how things could be approached better at this blog.

HTML Goodies ColdFusion Article

2008-07-10T00:00:00-06:00

Hey, we are getting more and more coverage. The presence of Adobe and the continued advances in ColdFusion have grown beyond the former status of our language.

HTML Goodies Article on ColdFusion

Personally I don't care for CFForm in my applications. Yet, that is a matter of style. You have to consider of course that we do things with COOP. So that would be a factor.

Script vs Tag Speed

2008-07-07T00:00:00-06:00

Is CFScript Slower than CFSet

OK... last week there was a big chatter online about the speed of script vs the speed of tags. The user ran 10,000 loops in script then ran the same using CFSet in a loop.

The Short Realities

This is not going to be a long post but rather an answer to the mistakes many of us make when testing. When we test we should make sure our results are valid. :) I sought to validate this developer's tests and we are running CF8 on the machine where the tests are being run. The first three tests showed script 1/3 the speed, script was 3 times faster and then typically the results from both averaged less than 5% difference. Your results may vary but a big gun at Fig Leaf also checked things out and came to the conclusion this whole topic is a waste of time.

What's the point?

So why did I bring it up? Well, if you check out my book "ColdFusion 8 Tutorial" you will find we use script over and over and suggest that if you haven't tried it out you should try it out. There is nothing wrong with using tags. Yet, it seems there is a rolling attempt to demonize script from certain segments of the community. Let's be kind to those who are old school because there is nothing wrong with doing tag based coding. Yet, for those of us who prefer script... this post is just here to say. Laugh a bit... it's nice that we aren't the only crazy ones out in the internet world. Consider the chatter on the speed of script last week!

Browser Dependence Day

2008-07-04T00:00:00-06:00

Browser Dependence

Yes, the play on words is intentional. As I write this post it is "Independce Day" in America, July 4th. Yet when it comes to working with the web we find we are still very dependent. Here is a question for everyone.

Is there anyone out there besides me who is still not free from issues based on what browser you are using?

The Little Pictures

OK, veterans can skip this chapter but the rest should read it. When we build a web site it has to run in a way that works for the whole world. You have Mac Users, Windows Users, Linux Users... and then you have many operating systems on each machine, AND you have have many browsers and versions of browsers! Getting your stuff to run on all of the machines is possible but there is of course the issue of the return on this investment. How do you conquer this? Well, it will be different from one company to the next. You could go out and buy enough machines to test all of these use case instances but that would be a great investment in terms of space, time and maintenance. Just imagine trying to keep all those machines virus free! So at the end of the day the big picture is all the little pictures that tell the true story of how dependent our design is and how successful we are with that design.

The First Solution

Now... to the better solutions. My first suggestion is to go to something like Browser Shots where you can get a view of how your site will look on about any browser out there. This is a great service and it is not anything new. Yet, how many of us are taking the time to do this? Many of us that are reading this blog will note that we are code developers and not designers. Well, in that case it is even more important for us to learn to use a tool like this. We don't deal with the design aspects of HTML and CSS enough to know the issues with all the different browsers.

The Second Solution

There are many versions of this solution and they basically end up being called by two names. Layouts and Skins. We could test every last page we deliver to our customers from our web sites but this would take a solution to a problem and trade the old problem for a bigger problem. Our return on investment would likely get worse and not better. This is why we need to skin our web sites. By creating common look and feel solutions that can be impressed on page content from one page to the next we make fixes and investment much better. The topic is far to big for this post but it should help us to get thinking in the right direction. It also would be a failure if we failed to mention that because without it again this solution would turn into another problem. ColdFusion and other application servers have ways to make skinning and templates work. Watch for more blogs on those subjects later.

By the way... hope here and abroad your holiday and or week end is great!

Happy 4th of July!

New ColdFusion Book Shipping!

2008-07-02T00:00:00-06:00

Yes, after months of work we have the book printed and ready to sell. (Yes, I wrote the book.)

ColdFusion 8 Tutorial

It is shipping!

http://www.packtpub.com/coldfusion-8-developer-tutorial/book

About the Book

My book is a bootcamp style guide to creating professional ColdFusion web applications. It covers the topic a bit different from the wonderful book by Mr. Forta. Our goal was to create a single book that covered the topic in a broader scope. Learn the basics fast, learn AJAX and other key power features in ColdFusion 8, learn the basics of how to use CFCs, and learn to use custom tags. Our book has great coverage on how to integrate your web site with other sites like Flickr and more. (We even have some coverage of changes in the ColdFusion 8 Update 1.)

CFDevCon UK

2008-06-30T00:00:00-06:00

Well, it has been years since I have been over seas. There have been times in Canada and in Mexico but I was just a teen ager when we lived in Italy for about six months. This time it's a trip to the UK for CFDevCon. I will be presenting on two topics. I will be presenting on jQuery ColdFusion integration and on the fantastic power of COOP. We are also working on integrating COOP with a number of other frameworks at this time. We will show more of that at the conference. So you can use COOP as a stand alone framework for people who hate frameworks or you can use it integrated with others. The conference dates are from September 25 to 26th.