ColdFusion-Talk Roundup: Aug 28, 2008 : SQL Injection, Web Services, Academic Licensing and Career Advice

by Kay Smoljak

Noteworthy threads from the famous ColdFusion-Talk (CF-Talk) List on House of Fusion for the Week of August 18 - August 24, 2008

SQL injection (August 8, 2008)

Thread: SQL injection attack on House of Fusion

The ongoing discussion about SQL Injection attacks continues – with over 200 posts in the thread! There's lots of advice on protecting servers and code against the attacks (the short version: always use cfqueryparam) as well as a discussion of how the attacks operate.

Returning binary data from a web service (August 18, 2008)

Thread: Web Service Issue, pls help

Vishnu Prasad wanted to use an image returned from a Java web service. A number of subscribers offered suggestions for accomplishing this task, along with troubleshooting advice when Vishnu's first attempts did not work. As of Sunday, the issue with this particular web service was still unresolved – but the information in the thread is useful for anyone needing to do something similar.

CFC structure and returning the SQL Server identity column (August 19, 2008)

Thread: CFC Best Practises

Scott Stewart was looking for advice on the best way to structure a CFC made up of a number of queries wrapped in conditional code. Brian Kotek offered helpful advice, and the thread then turned to a discussion of the safest way to return the last inserted ID in SQL Server.

ColdFusion Academic Licensing (August 18, 2008)

Thread: Details on ColdFusion 9's "free for academic" licensing?

Pete Ruckelshaus, a high school computer science teacher, is teaching ColdFusion and was curious about the "free for academic use" licensing that Adobe announced at the CFUnited conference. While several subscribers pointed out that the academic licenses were not yet available, several alternatives were suggested such as Open BlueDragon and Railo. The points raised in the thread about possible curriculum sources would also interest other educators.

ColdFusion Career Advice (August 22, 2008)

Thread: A year as a ColdFusion developer now what?

Henry Ho posted a request for career advice, having recently quit his job because it was not offering him opportunities to advance his ColdFusion skills and learn from others. Several responses were posted, mostly of the opinion that it might be difficult to find a job with only 1 year of experience.

Kay is an all-round web developer who has been developing with ColdFusion since 2000. She runs Clever Starfish with her partner Dave and several very demanding cats, and sits on the committee of the Australian Web Industry Association. She is a regular writer for Fusion Authority and the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update, and a ColdFusion blogger on Sitepoint.com.

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