Blog

I have just finished the keynote of the Adobe onAir bus tour. WOW!! AIR looks amazing, it just opens the possibilities to a whole new level. You can find the notes by clicking here.

In this presentation they covered more of the capabilities of AIR, how to use it and much more stuff. Mike, covered how to create an AIR package from a simple Flex Application with Flex Builder 3. Flex Builder 3 looks awesome and the ease of creating the applications is just outstanding. You can also download it from the Adobe Labs. The gears and turning... So beware...

Here is the link to the google doc notes.

The guys from Ebay also demoed their application San Dimas where you have a full integration to your desktop from ebay. WOW!! It was an excellent demo and the app just looks great. As soon as I get a link I will update this.

Congratulations to the ADOGO group for getting their user group status. Adam, Brian and Maxim, congrats on this. Maybe we can share presenters and topics.

I love Transfer!! I have been using it to the max in all my projects and now I found it an undisspensable tool for my software development. If you have not checked out this incredible ORM, please do. Since I am using it so much, I decided to host the docs on my site for easy access, hope this is ok with you Mark?

Just point your browser to: http://www.luismajano.com/transfer/documentation/ and you can read to your eyes content.

Finally, Oscar Arevalo of Home Portals, ColdBox Reader and a constant ColdBox contributor is finally blogging. So welcome to the blogosphere Oscar, and put out some of your usual funky topics.

I have been using more and more cfcUnit and find it really essential now. So I have uploaded the documentation to my site for easy reference that anybody can get access to.

Just point your browser to: http://www.luismajano.com/cfcunit/documentation and you can read to your eyes content.

As you all know by know, ColdFusion is an excellent OO platform for web development and as our systems grew in complexity and maintainability we need to plan REALLY WELL!! The best way we can is UML, the Unified Modeling Language. The purpose of the Unified Modeling Language is to provide a language-independent and platform independent modeling notation. UML tools are as versatile as the UML is foundational.

I am so used to modeling in UML now that it is a REQUIREMENT for any project, no matter how small or how big. In that sense, some of you may be beginning to see the benefits of object modeling and may wonder how in the world to start. Well, I found a great article in the NetBeans website that touches on why to use UML and provides some great samples. Although it is directed to the Java developer, I believe a ColdFusion developer can gain some benefit from it.

Why Model with UML?

My good Friend Oscar Arevalo, from Home Portals fame and CFEmpire has now released another incredible application, WSCandis.

WSCandis is a caching and directory solution especially tailored for enterprise environments in which client applications rely on a layer of webservices that may be located on separate locations. In these environments applications are often deployed from one or more development servers to one or more production servers.

The Webservices Caching and Directory Service (wscandis) tries to address the following issues:

The need of applications that act as webservices clients to have the webservice WSDL address hardcoded as part of the application code.

The lack of a single directory of web services used by all applications

Lack of a consistent naming scheme for all webservices (i.e. "com.uvi.general.resorts") regardless of their network location, implementation language and environment.

An application's need to use a different webservice, or the same webservice but on different

locations, based on whether the application is being executed on a development or production

server.

Performance hit on high demand applications due to having to continually instantiate and discard

webservice stubs for each request.

WSCandis tries to solve these problems using a two-part approach: a webservice stub caching mechanism and the use of a central directory and lookup service.

The following is a very useful JAVA tip for ColdFusion developers. Ever wanted to log a structure or array easily into a log file or use it as a string without actually looping and parsing to a string variable? Well, you always had the method right there lurking in the misterious but powerful Java world. The all ecompassing toString() method.

Actually all java.lang.Object inerit a toString() method as you can read in the java docs.

Below is the actual info:

toString

public String toString()

Returns a string representation of the object. In general, the toString method returns a string that "textually represents" this object. The result should be a concise but informative representation that is easy for a person to read. It is recommended that all subclasses override this method.

The toString method for class Object returns a string consisting of the name of the class of which the object is an instance, the at-sign character `@', and the unsigned hexadecimal representation of the hash code of the object. In other words, this method returns a string equal to the value of:

getClass().getName() + '@' + Integer.toHexString(hashCode())

Returns:

a string representation of the object.

As you can see, this method can be very useful. So how do I use it in Coldfusion? Very easily, jeje. look below:

//Create a structure

myStruct = structNew();

myStruct.today = now();

myStruct.name = "luis majano";

myStruct.url = "www.luismajano.com";

//Convert to string

#myStruct.toString()#

And there you go ladies and gentleman!! Enjoy this quick tip!!

I am totally excited that I am going to my first conference in 4 years!! WOOOHOOO!! My old employer was not, to be political, a good establishment for professional growth. But now I am ready to join back the world and not be trapped in a cavern!! So CF.Ojective() here I come...

I just got confirmed on my trip to the conference and I am exciting out of my socks!! I printed out the schedule and created what could be my schedule for the conference:

My CF.Objective() Schedule

Friday May 4, 2007

• 10:15AM - Either Chris Scott: Intro to aspect programming or Simon's XML for the rest of us.
• 11:25AM - Dean Saxe: Application security and compliance
• 1:30PM - Sean Corfield: Ajax Integration
• 2:40PM - Mark Mandel: Advanced Transfer
• 4:10PM - Mark Drew: The CFEclipse Project or Charlie Arehart's long named session title

Saturday May 5, 2007

• 9:00 AM - Matt Woodward: OO Architecture or Hal Helms large scale application architecture
• 10:15 AM - Jason Delmore: Scorpio (Have no clue what Steve Rittler's session will be)
• 11:24 AM - Matt Woodward: Building sustainable software or Simon's Object think
• 1:30 PM - Simeon Bateman session or Far Cry
• 3:00 PM - Peter Farrel: Head first mach-ii or Howard Scholz (Have no idea what will his session be?)
• 4:10 PM - Mark Mandel: Developing apps with Transfer

Sunday May 6, 2007

• 9:00 AM - Keynote
• 10:15 AM - Paul Kenny: Test-Driven Development
• 11:24 AM - Sean Corfield: Real world SOA
• 1:30 PM - Hal Helms: Object Oriented MOdeling or Rob's Cairngorm
• 3:00 PM - Maxim Porges: CF/Flex with Java
• 4:10 PM - Peter Farrel: Mach-II 1.5 or Daryl Banttari's Cryptography and digital security.

PS: I will also be taking some ColdBox CD's for anyone interested. (Final 2.0.0 Version)