100th ColdFusion Meetup Today - SeeFusion Giveaway, Too

Today is the 100th episode of the Online ColdFusion Meetup Group, a.k.a. CFMeetup, with Adobe speaker Josh Adams on the topic of ColdFusion as the ideal server-side data provider for iPhone applications. The meeting starts online at 12p ET; find out more here.

This special anniversary of the CFMeetup is made possible by Charlie Arehart, a tireless champion of the ColdFusion Community, who has worked very hard for several years now to improve the organization and execution of meetings and has strived to provide a consistent speaker lineup that give contemporary, meaningful presentations on ColdFusion related topics.

As the founder of ColdFusion Meetup, I'm honored to attend today's anniversary event. In 2004, Macromedia provided employees with unlimited Breeze Meeting accounts (now Adobe Connect) after it acquired Presidia, the original makers of the Flash based meeting software. As Breeze became widely used in Macromedia for internal company meetings, it occurred to me that I could make good use of my unlimited account by starting an online presentation series for the ColdFusion community of developers, and so I formed the Online ColdFusion Meetup Group. The first meeting was February 2005 where I convinced several members of the ColdFusion engineering team to take questions about the release of ColdFusion MX 7 from online guests. Participation grew as I attracted speakers on a monthly basis, and it became a consistent series that ran throughout the year. Later, as I moved from ColdFusion Support to the ColdFusion Engineering team working on Scorpio (CF8), Charlie happily took over the reigns to keep the momentum going... and how has he!

Prizes
Now that I'm a software engineer at Webapper Services providing enterprise level ColdFusion consulting, among the special prize giveaways at today's CFMeetup, Webapper will be giving away a 2-server Enterprise license for SeeFusion - retail value of $600!

SeeFusion is a utility for monitoring and troubleshooting ColdFusion application servers. SeeFusion gives you the ability to "see" how your ColdFusion servers are processing requests in real time.

See you today at CFMeetup!

  ColdFusion Request Tuning Settings in Depth

Undoubtedly, the ColdFusion Administrator settings for Request Tuning are critical to performance of Web applications running in the server. While reading the recent Adobe article on Performance Tuning for ColdFusion Applications I was surprised to find the content on this topic to be a little light. With that in mind, I set out to expand on the topic of the Request Tuning settings.

Read more of my in-depth look at these ColdFusion Adminstrator settings in the complete blog entry on Webapper blog.

  Realtime ColdFusion Blog Notifications with Adobe Wave

Receive real time notifications for updates on the blog aggregator ColdFusionBloggers.org with Adobe Wave. Just navigate to the ColdFusionBloggers website and click the badge in the lower right for Get alerts with Adobe Wave. Built on Adobe AIR, you can now use Adobe Wave as a single application to receive all your notifications in one place. Adobe Wave runs as a desktop application that sits in a corner of your screen.

The ColdFusion Bloggers website is created and maintained by the ubiquitous, prolific, and super nice guy Ray Camden, ColdFusion Jedi Master. Ray was among the very first to utilize Adobe Wave for the benefit of the ColdFusion community of developers.

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  Flex Builder 3: Serial Number is Invalid

Last week I applied for the Free Flex Builder 3 For Unemployed Developers so that I could build Flex applications on my new Mac Book Pro, and in two short days I received an email with my new Professional edition license key.

I had been using the trial version of Flex Builder 3, which had been installed from my Mac administrative account. Upon entering the new serial number I was greeted with a contradictory message in the Flex Builder 3 Activation dialog:

Current License: Professional Edition - Educational
Serial Number is Invalid

Flex Builder determined that it was a Professional Edition license key, but then indicated that the number was invalid, complete with a green check mark indicating it was valid. That doesn't make any sense at all.

I suspected that problem was somehow with permissions so I did a bit of Googling to find this recent post on the official Adobe Flex Team Blog which indicated at least that the Flex Builder license should be stored at:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flex/license.properties

However, when I examined my file system I discovered that the Adobe directory did not contain a Flex subdirectory, and therefore no license.properties file.

To test permissions, I then launched Flex Builder with the sudo command to permit Flex Builder to run with root privileges. My assumption was that when I ran Flex Builder with my regular administrative account it was not able to write the license file to disk, and starting FB with sudo should allow it to do so. You can see that when run as sudo, Flex Builder wrote the license file to disk with the user and group of root / admin.

I was pleased to find out that this was in fact the problem, and Flex Builder now accepted my license and indicated that it was Professional Edition and valid.

  Perspective on ColdFusion's Big Question (TM)

Just wanted to share a reply I made on GetSatisfaction to provide a historical perspective to the question "What really is the future of ColdFusion?". Before you ask what the future holds, its good to look back to see where ColdFusion has been since its inception in 1995.

CFMX 7 (released Feb 2005) was the release where product adoption saw the first major boost since the "MX" overhaul. Since CFMX 6 (released June 2002, in a down economy) was a re-architecture in Java/J2EE from the earlier CF5 (released May 2001) written in C++, there were few new features introduced and there was an associated learning curve now that the product had a Java foundation.

Problems in the re-architecture surfaced, slowing new adoption of CFMX6, leading to the point release 6.1 (released July 2003) which for the most part corrected all the issues and restored the waning product reputation.

ColdFusion MX 7 was a feature rich release, which attracted many new developers, most of whom had begun to grok CFCs and Java integration. The post 9/11 economy had generally recovered as well, adding to an increase in technology spending.

With most product release cycles, there's a decline in sales or tail at the end, and ColdFusion 8 (released August 2007) saw another major boost in adoption over the tail as it too was a feature rich release that provided solutions to many contemporary problems in Web Dev.

Frankly, IMO, nearly all negative connotations (i.e. "Legacy Software") about the ColdFusion Web Application Server are due to anachronistic experiences with earlier versions of the product in the mid/late 90's. Those opinions seem to be expressed from developers that are less familiar with the revisions and enhancements found in recent ColdFusion versions. (Case in point)

[Added note: The easy learning curve, weak typing, and case-insensitivity in the product are among some factors that may have been conducive to poor programming practices... i.e. give them enough rope to hang themselves, so to speak. Does anyone remember memory corruption from not locking shared scope variables? That whole conundrum went away with CFMX]

Personally, I think ColdFusion is a fantastic product and I love using it. It has an extensive, contemporary tag library on a stable Java base and Web application development time can be short and sweet due to its perpetual focus on RAD.

ColdFusion 9 is well known to be underway and will further address solutions to where technology is going. Furthermore, risk due to proprietary software is mitigated by the release of third party CFML engines which can provide a core of language features if not the full, rich diversity of language found in Adobe's product.

To throw in a plug for myself, I'm currently seeking full time, permanent employment in the greater Boston area. See: Adobe Expert Seeking ColdFusion / Flex Dev or QA

  To Flex Camp, and Beyond!

A week from today will be the 2nd annual Flex Camp Boston at Bentley University. At a very modest cost, this is a full day event packed with sessions at the intermediate to advanced level given by industry experts. Register for Flex Camp Boston.

For the last year I've been on the Flex SDK team as a Quality Assurance Engineer, and before that I had excellent run of more than 7 years testing and supporting ColdFusion. I know most of the speakers that will be presenting at Flex Camp and can attest to their passion for building the next wave of Rich Internet Applications, so I fully encourage you to attend if you haven't signed up yet to share in the excitement and mingle with your peers.

This will be an unexpected reunion of sorts for me as I suddenly find myself as a customer rather than employee. With the extra time as I seek new employment I'll immerse myself in training with Flex and AIR, and try to produce an application as an online reference to demonstrate as an example. The odd thing about QA'ing a software product is that you are exposed to narrow facets in which you dive very deeply, and don't often get the chance to practice the breadth of the product. My success in ColdFusion QA was largely dependent on the many preceding years where I provided "gold" level support for the product, something which required me to constantly explore and exercise every nook and cranny of the CF app server and language.

My first inclination for a Flex app is to build my own photography business website in Flex to avoid the cost of purchasing one of the reputable but expensive prebuilt websites from places like LiveBooks, BigFolio, or A Photo Folio.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone from coworkers to customers to local cfug friends for taking a moment to contact me and express their thoughts and show their concern. People have been writing and chatting intensely while offering job tips and advice. As I mentioned on Facebook, I've never before felt the online community to be as tangible and real as I do now. Thank you all, and I hope to see those of you in the area at Flex Camp!

  Problems with configuring CF801 on Mac for System Startup

Two problems with configuring ColdFusion 8.01 on Mac OS X for startup on system boot when using the the utility {cf_root}/bin/cf-init.sh. The first issue is that cf-init.sh cannot be used again to configure CF for startup on boot after the cf-init.sh script is used to unconfigure the service. The second issue is that for Multiserver configuration the script cf-init.sh cannot be used to unconfigure CF as a startup service and the items under /Library/StartupItems/ColdFusion8Multi must be removed manually. The ColdFusion Engineering team is actively seeking to correct these issues, but I'm posting for your convenience in case you run into this beforehand.

Issue 1 logged as ColdFusion bug 73548
On Mac, running cf-init.sh to install system startup script cannot be done a second time after running cf-init.sh uninstall.

The cf-init.sh function install_mac() permanently moves the file {cf_root}/bin/cf-standalone-startup to /Library/StartupItems/ under the new name ColdFusion8 as shown here:

Then the uninstall_mac() function in cf-init.sh permanently removes that file ColdFusion8 as shown here:

There are no longer any copies of {cf_root}/bin/cf-standalone-startup under any name on the system, so another attempt to configure ColdFusion to start on System Boot cannot be performed.

More details:

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  2008 Codie Awards: Adobe ColdFusion 8, Captivate, & Connect

Earlier this year the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) announced finalists in the 2008 Codie awards. The SIIA describes itself as "the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry."

Yesterday the winners were announced. As a contributing member of the Adobe ColdFusion 8 QA team, I'm especially proud that ColdFusion 8 won for Best Web Services Solution, a category described as:

Best Web Services Solution
Awards the solution that best connects disparate applications and data across an enterprise or between enterprises using web services standards such as SOAP, XML and WDSL. Includes Web services enabling technologies, infrastructure, middleware, system integration tools, etc.

In addition to comprehensive, across the board regression testing, the specific CF8 features I worked on include testing support for all new RDBMS versions, integrating new JDBC driver versions, LiveCycle Data Services Integration, and CFReport HTML support. I also performed installation testing across J2EE servers such as WebLogic, WebSphere, and JBoss while emphasizing the Linux OS. Currently I'm working on SOAP-based Web Service testing in Flex. Speaking of Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 won the Codie award for the Best Open Source Solution.

More information about the SIIA 2008 Codie Awards can be found at InfoWorld

  ColdFusion 8.01 64-bit and Supported Linux Distros

The ColdFusion 8.01 System Requirements as shown in the detailed platform support matrix [PDF] indicates that support for 64-bit Linux distributions is limited to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and SuSe Linux Enterprise Server 10.1. This fine print appears to often go overlooked, so I just want to broadcast it a little louder here.

I was contacted today by someone reporting installation problems and mentioned glibc and floating point errors. A bit of Googling turned up this Google Group thread and this blog entry. Apparently, glibc 2.5 is required for the 64-bit binaries used in the ColdFusion 8.01 64-bit server, so RHEL4's glibc 2.4 just won't do.

On a related note, the ColdFusion Installation Support page currently has a broken link to receive free installation support by email. I notified the web team about the broken link, and I found that the new way to enter this type of installation support request is by registering your product and completing a form here.

  Working with Models: A tough gig, but someone has to do it!

This month at Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts I'm learning to work with fashion models in studio photography. This course, DP206, teaches us the rhythm of working with models, how to direct them and engage them to turn the shots we visualize in our heads into beautiful prints in real life. It puts together everything we've learned so far about about camera operation, studio lighting, portraiture, concept, and posing. Additionally, as the program emphasizes the use of Lightroom for digital imaging workflow, and Photoshop for retouching and compositing, this course also puts our full range of beauty retouching skills to the test.

...not that we really need to, because they are -after all- models. ;-)

BOOM!, there it is in living color. I'm especially proud of this one, and I think its my best image to date. You can check it out on Adobe's new Photoshop Express Gallery.

The models are real, both male and female, and our best images will go into their portfolio as well. This means lots of exposure to the photographers because every ad agency they work with will see model's portfolio, and if we're lucky, they'll want to know more about the photographer behind that great model shot. From the CDIA website:

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  ColdFusion 8.01 64-bit Windows Performance Comparisons

My distant colleague Manju has just published a very well written article on Adobe DevNet regarding performance considerations of running ColdFusion 8.01 on 64-bit Windows (and Mac) platforms. The article gets you up to speed on the basics of 64-bit architecture in practical terms, however the best part is on the last page where he reports on three different ColdFusion scenarios comparing 32-bit performance to 64-bit for cpu intensive, memory intensive, and disk I/O intensive conditions. Its definitely worth a read:

Taking advantage of 64-bit support in ColdFusion 8
by Manjukiran Pacchhipulusu
ColdFusion QA Engineer

At the end, Manju provides a list of credits that helped him develop the article, including my blog entry from last year, Performance Considerations for Running ColdFusion 8 in 64-bit Mode.

  Introducing Flash Mini - Squeezing Flash on the iPhone

Just when all the news of porting Flash to the iPhone has died down, I stumbled across what appears to be an internal document diagramming how Steve Jobs intends to do just that with a product code named Flash Mini. Who knew!?

Read the full story for more...

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  Using the CFC Proxy in a ColdFusion Cluster

The CFC Proxy API was introduced as a supported feature in CFMX 7.01. It allows you to call ColdFusion Components (CFCs) from Java classes such as a standalone servlet running in the same JVM. In order for this to work, the Java class must be loaded by the ColdFusion classloader rather than a higher level classloader in the J2EE container.

To load a Java class with the ColdFusion classloader, the class's jar file must be specified in ColdFusion's web.xml under the cf.class.path parameter. To avoid managing multiple copies of a custom jar file between ColdFusion instances clustered on JRun, you can put a single copy of the custom jar file under a central location outside the JRun root directory. Then modify the web.xml for each CF instance to point to that jar file in the cf.class.path entry.

Surprisingly, there is no documentation on using CFCProxy on livedocs.adobe.com, but instead you can find this reference on Ben Forta's website. The reference describes the API and provides a brief example implementation. A few details are left out such as how to compile the custom Java class, so I'll provide a quick walk through of how I set all this up...

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  Adobe MAX 2007 - I'm there in spirit

As Jason Delmore, ColdFusion Product Manager, says:
      "You really distilled our CF message".

  An Experiment with Improved File Upload Handling in CF 8

ColdFusion 8 Application Server offers an important improvement regarding memory utilization during the uploading of large files via the CFFILE tag. This entry will offer an experimental observation to demonstrate the improvement in CF 8, but first I'll expand upon each of the related settings and provide some usage scenarios.

Request Throttle Settings
The ColdFusion 7.01 Administrator introduced new file upload settings to better control file uploads. The broadest setting is called Request Throttle Memory, with a default of 200MB, where its purpose is to regulate the cumulative impact of all concurrent large file uploads on the ColdFusion server. The adjacent setting for Request Throttle Threshold, default of 4MB, is the minimum size of file uploads for which the throttle should regulate, anything below the threshold is ignored by the throttle. Further up on the Settings page is also the new field Maximum Size of Post Data, with a default of 100MB.

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