The Adobe ColdFusion 8 Developer Exam arrived earlier this year and it is about time I took it. But like Ben Nadel, the exam scares me! Why? Because there is so much more to know. With the introduction of new AJAX tags, native JSON support, .NET integration, image manipulation, threading, interfaces, not to mention full PDF integration, the presentation builder and across the board enhancements, there are a lot of new things to know. Read more – ‘A Minor Rant About The ColdFusion 8 Developer Exam’.
CFEclipse is a community project that builds on the open-source Eclipse framework to deliver expert, code-centric developers a new option for ColdFusion development. CFEclipse provides Eclipse with an outline view, a CFC (ColdFusion component) view, code completion (code hinting), syntax highlighting text editors for CFML and CFC files, and many more ColdFusion-specific features. Read more – ‘CFEclipse Keyboard Shortcuts’.
Sweatshop is the leading specialist running retailer in the UK with 29 stores and 6 websites. We organise 2 of the largest road races in the UK and have been in business since 1971.
Over the next 18 months Sweatshop is looking to dramatically develop its websites, road races and retail operation. We are looking for key personnel to take the business forward as we intend to treble the size of the company in the next 5 years. Read more – ‘ColdFusion Developer Required – Sweatshop.co.uk – Leading Specialist Running Retailer’.
Since the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) was released at the end of February, we now have a stable platform on which to build desktop applications with our existing web skills. A number of people have already started and the Adobe AIR Marketplace is filling with AIR applications by the day.
So what is the big deal? Read more – ‘Great Adobe AIR Applications to Check Out’.
With the release of ColdFusion MX 7 came the introduction of the Application.cfc ColdFusion component. This component replaced the traditional Application.cfm and OnRequestEnd.cfm ColdFusion application templates. Furthermore, if Application.cfc is present, both of these templates are ignored by the application.
In addition to replacing the Application.cfm, the Application.cfc introduced a number of built in methods that handle specific events. These events, as discussed in detail below, allow for a greater control over events within the application. Read more – ‘Anatomy of the Application.cfc in ColdFusion 8’.
The THIS scope in the Application.cfc contains several built-in variables that allow you to set the properties of the application; the name, session management etc. With the release ColdFusion 8 comes the introduction of application-based pathing in the form of the THIS.mappings and THIS.customTagPaths variables. Read more – ‘Application-Based Paths in ColdFusion’.
Download the SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver 1.2, a Type 4 JDBC driver that provides database connectivity through the standard JDBC application program interfaces (APIs) available in J2EE (Java2 Enterprise Edition).
This release of the JDBC Driver is JDBC 3.0 compliant and runs on the Java Development Kit (JDK) version 1.4 and higher. It has been tested against all major application servers including BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, and Sun. Read more – ‘Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver 1.2’.
Following a conversation with a friend regarding how ColdFusion handles arrays and structures in 'the background', I was interested to find out what Java classes each were mapped to. This was a relatively simple case of using the functions getClass(), getSuperClass() and getName() to parse out the name of the Java classes. Read more – ‘The Java Behind a ColdFusion Array and Structure’.
Array and Structures are considered to be complex data types in ColdFusion. In contrast, simple data types are ones that contain a single piece of data, such as an Integer, String, or Boolean value. A complex data type can contain multiple pieces of data, which, in the case of arrays, are usually related. All the data are referenced under a single variable name. You can think of a complex variable as a variable that contains a collection of other variables inside it. An array maps Integers to arbitrarily typed objects (Integers, Strings, Booleans and Objects) while a structure, or associative array, maps arbitrarily typed objects to arbitrarily typed objects. Read more – ‘The Inner Workings of a ColdFusion Array and Structure’.
New Atlanta is announcing today, at CFUnited Europe - a ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) technology conference in London, U.K.- that they will be creating and distributing a free open-source Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) version of BlueDragon, their ColdFusion-compatible web application server. Read more – ‘New Atlanta Open-Sources BlueDragon’.
