The opposite of every great idea is another great idea
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.
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.
<!--- Arrays (repeat up the hierarchy) ---> <cfdump var="#arrayNew(1).getClass().getName()#"> <cfdump var="#arrayNew(1).getClass().getSuperClass().getName()#"> <!--- Structures (repeat up the hierarchy) ---> <cfdump var="#structNew().getClass().getName()#"> <cfdump var="#structNew().getClass().getSuperClass().getName()#">
What became immediately apparent was that both were handled differently. In the case of a ColdFusion array, the parent class was the java.util.Vector, which seemed obvious. The Vector class implements a growable array of objects. Like an array, it contains components that can be accessed using an integer index. However, the size of a Vector can grow or shrink as needed to accommodate adding and removing items after the Vector has been created.
ColdFusion structures, however, are handled entirely differently, with the parent class being a coldfusion.runtime class. In fact, as we can see below, the code to handle a ColdFusion structure is entirely written for ColdFusion until the root class of java.lang.Object. Clearly ColdFusion does some complex wizardry to handle the complex nature of structues (associative arrays).
The class hierarchy for an Adobe ColdFusion array:
java.lang.Object java.util.AbstractCollection java.util.AbstractList java.util.Vector coldfusion.runtime.Array
The class hierarchy for an Adobe ColdFusion structure:
java.lang.Object coldfusion.util.CaseInsensitiveMap coldfusion.util.FastHashtable coldfusion.runtime.Struct
Being an inquisitive person, I applied the same code to Railo and BlueDragon, with equally interesting results.
The Java class hierarchy behind a Railo array:
java.lang.Object railo.runtime.type.ArrayImpl
The Java class hierarchy behind a Railo structure:
java.lang.Object railo.runtime.type.StructImpl
The Java class hierarchy behind a BlueDragon array:
java.lang.Object com.naryx.tagfusion.cfm.engine.cfData com.naryx.tagfusion.cfm.engine.cfJavaObjectData com.naryx.tagfusion.cfm.engine.cfArrayData com.naryx.tagfusion.cfm.engine.cfArrayListData
The Java class hierarchy behind a BlueDragon structure:
java.lang.Object com.naryx.tagfusion.cfm.engine.cfData com.naryx.tagfusion.cfm.engine.cfJavaObjectData com.naryx.tagfusion.cfm.engine.cfStructData
Adendum: Ben Nadel has a good little post on ColdFusion Data Types from Different Sources and How ColdFusion Sees Them.
Killing ColdFusion is something I love to do!! This time I managed to kill ColdFusion by amending the Class Paths listed in the Java and JVM settings of my local instance of ColdFusion MX 7. When you amend any Java and JVM settings you need to restart the ColdFusion service and hope.
I jokingly commented to a colleague that this was a brilliant way to kill ColdFusion and I wasn’t far wrong.
Doing a clean install is out of the question, partly because of the time factor but also because there are generally a large number of settings, datasources, logs, etc configured on the server.
Fortunately ColdFusion is clever and stores a backup of the jvm.config file in the C:\CFusionMX7\runtime\bin directory. Simply deleting the broken config file and renaming the jvm.config.bak to jvm.config, followed by a ColdFusion application service restart fixes the issue (until the next time).
The world’s premier independent, vendor-neutral print resource for the ever-expanding international community of Internet technology professionals using the Java programming language and the Java development platform, has just completed volume 11.
Below are links to of each of the 12 issues.
One of the many reasons to use ColdFusion MX is that it has a large, standard toolset that enables the creation of full-featured, dynamic Web applications. The tag-based language makes it relatively simple to query a relational database and send e-mail. In a similar way, you can create and search Verity full-text indexes.
However, there are situations where you cannot use the full-text searching capabilities of Verity. For example, Verity only runs on Windows, Linux and Solaris, therefore the ability to run ColdFusion MX on the Apple OS X operating system, whilst advantageuos to developers who code on the Apple platform, does not include the ability to use Verity. Furthermore, programmers who work in a hybrid J2EE/ColdFusion MX environment cannot natively use the Verity search capabilities in the J2EE environment. Finally, programmers who need customized searching and indexing capabilities may find the standard Verity integration limiting. There are work-arounds include installing Verity on a Windows, Linux, or Solaris server and configuring your ColdFusion server to use the remote Verity server, however these may not only be impractical, but cost-prohibitative.
Enter Lucene, an open source full-text searching framework from the Apache Jakarta project, which, when combined with ColdFusion MX, can be run on Apple OS X, can be programmatically accessed by both J2EE and ColdFusion MX developers, and can be fully customized and extended.Apache Lucene is a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java. It is a technology suitable for nearly any application that requires full-text search, especially cross-platform.
Apache Lucene is an open source project available for free download.
Features
Scalable, High-Performance Indexing
Powerful, Accurate and Efficient Search Algorithms
If you don’t fancy attempting the task of writing your own ColdFusion implementation of Lucene, below are a couple of projects that will give you a kick-start along the road to indexing database content. With the addition of other Java projects such as PDFBox the textual content of a pdf can also be extracted and indexed.
Inspired by Lindex, Aaron Johnson has created a CFX Tag called CFX_Lucene that closely mimics the ColdFusion cfsearch tag, but uses Lucene rather than Verity.
http://cephas.net/blog/lucene/index.html
CFLucene is an open source project that attempts to provide developers an easy way to integrate the indexing and searching functions of the Apache Lucene Java library with a ColdFusion web application. The CFLucene is a collection of ColdFusion Components that natively call the Lucene Java classes to index and search any sort of textual data.
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