Not that this isn't already being blogged about a bazillion times already, but Macromedia has released the ColdFusion v7.01 updater, previously codenamed "Merrimack", today. The key updates are:
For more information, see the following links:
Still trying to wrap your head around OO concepts and to integrate them with ColdFusion? Take a look at Barney Boisvert's blog entry Designing an OO Backend.
Dave Ross has announced ColdSpring v0.2.0 and ColdSpringAOP. I'm a little behind on this announcement.
There's no real information on ColdSpringAOP, but they're supposed to unveil the whole thing this Thursday at the Frameworks Conference. Hopefully they'll also blog the contents of the presentation for those of us who can't attend the conference.
Doug Hughes blogged today about an interesting new API he's working on for inline dynamic database abstraction. The current name of the project is Reaction, but it appears as though he may rename the project.
In a nutshell, this API creates Beans, Gateways, DOAs and Transfer Objects for you on-the-fly. Here's a quick snippet from Doug's post:
<cfset myDb = CreateObject("Component", "reaction.reactionFactory").init("scratch", "mssql", "/scratch/data", "development") />
The init method of the ReactionFactory accepts these arguments:
DSN - This is the name of the ColdFusion DSN which will be used to access the database.
DbType - This as a string indicating the type of database which is being accessed. Currently the only option is "mssql" for Microsoft SQL server. More will be added in the future.
GenerationPath - This the mapping you created to the directory where code will be generated.
Mode - This controls the generation behavior of Reaction. Options are always, development and production. Always causes objects to always be regenerated. Development causes objects to be regenerated if the database structure has changed. Production causes objects to never be regenerated unless they don't exist on disk.The ReactionFactory currently has four public methods (in addition to init):
createBean(name) - This creates a bean object. More on this in a second.
createGateway(name) - This creates a gateway object.
createDao(name) - This creates a data access object.
createTo(name) - This creates a transfer object.For each of these methods, the name argument is the name of the table in the database. For the most part, I believe developers will be using the createBean() and createGateway() methods more than the others.
Beans are quite cool. They're not quite exactly your traditional beans. They have load(), save() and delete() methods.
I've been playing around with CFMX 7's CFCHART tag quite a bit lately. I've been trying to decide if I can get it to do all the things I want it to do. While it's certainly a nice tag, there are certain aspects of the tag I don't like. Fortunately, with some work you can customize the CFCHART functionality quite a bit. You can even design your own style sheets for use with the WebCharts3D engine that Macromedia licensed for use with CFXM 7.
The biggest obstacle is that Macromedia hasn't done a great job describing how to use the WebCharts3D designer and how those features map up to the internal CFMX syntax. There are a lot of differences in nomenclature between the two, and this makes it a bit of a pain to try to map what attributes of the CFCHART series of tags map up to the internal WebCharts3D XML style sheet.
After playing around with CFCHART for a few days, I found the best way to really learn the capabilities of what you can do w/CFCHART was to use the WebCharts3D v5.0 Enterprise Edition designer. In your CFusionMX7\charting folder you'll find a batch file called "webcharts.bat" Run this file to load the WebCharts3D designer.
Looking for help building Regular Expressions? The Regex Coach looks like a very promising tool for doing just that. The program is designed to specifically mimic the Perl RegEx Engine, but it should be helpful for other languages as well (like Java, Python, PHP, etc) that use Perl-like syntax. I came across this useful looking tool in a message that came across CF-Talk recently.
For all of you running Firefox, you really should upgrade your version immediately. The Washington Post has reported a severe security hole that can allow a malicious hacker to take control of your PC.
Upgrade to Firefox v1.07 now by downloading it from the Firefox Product page.
My boss wanted to make sure that on one of our servers we were updating our Symantec Anti-Virus definitions on an hourly basis. By default the Symantec Anti-Virus Client will only allow you to do a LiveUpdate once per day. Fortunately, there's a command line tool called VPDN_LU.exe which you can run to do silent updates.
Here are the command line options for the VPDN_LU.exe tool:
Ever wanted ColdFusion MX 6.1 and 7.0 running simultaneously under IIS 6? I've always wondered how difficult this would be to set up (without using JRun) but had never tried configuring a server this way before.
Last week though, I was building a new Windows 2003 Server as a development server at my house. I decided I really wanted to get both CFMX 6.1 and CFMX 7.0 running simultaneously so I could easily test code in both versions of the language, without having to toggle the services off and on. Turns out it's not so difficult—all you need to do is configure different "Web Sites" for each version of ColdFusion you want to run. In the below example I use a different ports to differentiate the version of ColdFusion.
Ok, it's been busy the past couple of weeks and I have hadn't much time to post—especially when it comes to personal matters. Anyway, I wanted to post some pictures of the new patio I just had installed. I'm in the process of putting down new sod in some areas of the yard and I'm hoping that we be finished up tomorrow.
Jenn & I are extremely happy with DeMatteo Patio's work. Tim did a great job. All of our neighbors have come over to say how good the patio looks. Even the guys laying the sod have commented on how nice of a job the guys did on the patio (and they do patio work themselves.)
Anyway, on to the pictures! The next project I'm hoping to get down before the end of the year is to get the house painted. I was going to try to do it in the spring, but I decided to wait until fall and until the patio was built. We're hoping the patio will help cut down on the mud and dirt the dogs get into (their used to be flower beds along the back of the house—or should I say mud pits.)
I was working on some code today and needed to determine what the value of the "Spool Interval" was in the CF Administrator. After playing around for a few minutes, this is what I came up with. This code uses non-documented functionality, but I've tested the code under CFMX 6.1 and CFMX 7 and it seems to work fine. Obviously, if Macromedia changes internal workings of ColdFusion, this code may break in the future.