	Fusion Authority The House of Fusion Technical Magazine	Issue: 129 October 15, 2003 November 10, 2003
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Community: WSJ3 Promotes Rich Internet Applications
News: Flash MX 2004 7.0.1 Updater Released; A Richer RSS Format from Jeremy Allaire; Macromedia to Acquire eHelp; Macromedia Software Ready for Linux; Free Versions of Red Hat Linux to be Discontinued; All Shook up in Linux Land
Tech and Tags: What's New at CFLib.org?
Views: Project TrackNews: From Editor to Programmer
Knowledge Base: ColdFusion MX: Calling Stored Procedures Which Return Reference Cursors in Oracle 8.1 and Higher; ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for Using COM Objects; ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for CFINSERT/CFUPDATE; ColdFusion MX: Searching for Words with non-English Characters in Non-English Verity Collections Fail to Return Results; ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for Data Source Connection Pooling

Community

WSJ3 Promotes Rich Internet Applications

Will S. Johnston has created a new weblog and a chat application for the discussion of the business and marketing side of Rich Internet Applications. His company, wsj3, is focused on creating solutions for business using Macromedia RIA technology. A schedule will be posted on his weblog with meeting times for upcoming chats on RIA.

Video and Text Chat Room Focused on RIA Business and Marketing

Weblog Focused on RIA Business and Marketing

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News

Flash MX 2004 7.0.1 Updater Released

November 10 - Macromedia announced the immediate release of a new updater to Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004. This update contains lots of bug fixes (about 250 of them, according to Lucian Beebe, Flash Product Manager for Macromedia), stability and performance improvements, and a tremendous amount of additional documentation.

Besides three megabytes of new in-product help, users will be glad to know that there are hundreds of pages of documentation on the JavaScript API included in the product. This is a previously undocumented extensibility layer that was built into the product when it was first released.

Beebe emphasizes that this updater is a patch rather than a full release of Flash, and as such, is free to customers with a license for Flash MX 2004 or Flash MX Professional 2004. The Flash MX 2004 7.0.1 updater is available at http://www.macromedia.com/go/updates/.

New, updated trial versions of Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 are also available for download today, and customers with previously expired trial versions will be able to try the new versions with a special serial number available at http://www.macromedia.com/go/tryfmx2004/.

Macromedia has also made improvements to their website, enhancing the Flash developer center by breaking it down into five sub-categories that users most often visit: data integration, Screens, video, Version 2 Components, and ActionScript 2.0. The developer center is available at http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash.

Beebe also reveals that Macromedia is planning a series of new components and improvements for Flash that will be released sometime over the next thirty days. These include:

Some new Remoting components that Macromedia will work on. They will announce plans for these components soon.
The ability for Flash MX 2004, Flash MX Professional 2004 and the Flash Player 7 to recognize components that run on Flash MX
Flash communication server components updates for Flash MX 2004, Flash MX Professional 2004 and the Flash Player 7. These will also be coming soon.

In addition, the Developer Resource Kits (DRKs) 1-4 will be updated so that they work with Flash MX 2004, Flash MX Professional 2004 and Flash Player 7. This new update will be out as DRK 5, and will be free to those who bought the previous four DRKs.

Installing the Updater: What You Should Know

All English product users who have installed Flash MX 2004 or Flash MX Professional 2004, or who will install until November 15th, will need to download the updater. This includes full product, NFR versions and evaluation copies. When installing the updater, do not, at any time, uninstall your current copy of Flash MX 2004. You should simply install it as a patch over the copy you have on your system. From today (November 11th) on, installs of Flash MX 2004 or Flash MX Professional 2004 on Macromedia's site will contain the updater as part of the download. Boxed editions of the software that ship out after November 15th will also include the updater. If you are in doubt as to what version of the software you carry, check out the version number. If it says 7.0.1, you've got the updater included. (Non-English versions of the product may have a different version number, as some of them are being rolled right into the product on release.) If it says 7.0, you should go to http://www.macromedia.com/go/updates/ and download the updater immediately.

For more information on this new updater, see:

Flash Product Page

Flash Developer Center

What's New in Flash 2004?

What's New in Flash 2004 FAQ

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A Richer RSS Format from Jeremy Allaire

Jeremy Allaire, technologist-in-residence at General Catalyst Partners and former Chief Technology Officer at Macromedia, Inc., has proposed creating a richer RSS format that he calls RSS-Data, which he'd like to see adopted widely on the Web. This new format would allow for richer data in RSS feeds, and would give people the ability to syndicate all sorts of data on the Web through RSS, such as application data, data from a database, and object data from programs. The e-Week article and Jeremy's blog paint a fuller picture.

A Richer RSS Format in the Works (e-Week, October 3, 2003)

Jeremy Allaire's Blog

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Macromedia to Acquire eHelp

October 22 -- Macromedia has just announced that they have entered into a merger agreement to acquire San Diego-based Ehelp corporation. Ehelp produces RoboHelp, the industry-standard help authoring tool, and RoboDemo, the leading Flash-based software demonstration product.

By combining these solutions with the Macromedia authoring family and with business solutions such as Macromedia Breeze, developers will be able to seamlessly create and deliver the rich user assistance and tutorial content that are integral to great digital experiences.

For more information on eHelp, and on the coming merger, please visit eHelp to Become Part of Macromedia.

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Macromedia Software Ready for Linux

Codeweavers, a company that makes software that enables Windows applications to run on a Linux PC, announced a new version of its product, Crossover Office 2.1. This version of Crossover Office supports Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver, although there is no mention of whether this software supports ColdFusion or Studio MX. For more information on Crossover Office 2.1, see the URLs below.

Macromedia Software Ready for Linux News.Com, October 28, 2003

Codeweavers Web Site

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Free Versions of Red Hat Linux to be Discontinued

November 3, 2003 -- Red Hat, Inc. announced that after April 2004, it will no longer be releasing, maintaining or distributing copies of its free Red Hat Linux software. It will stop maintainence and support for Red Hat Linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 as of December 31, 2003, and for Red Hat 9 as of April 30 2004. The move is designed to help Red Hat Linux customers migrate to Red Hat's Enterprise Linux line of products, which carry an annual subscription fee.

Free Versions of Red Hat Linux to be Discontinued (EWeek, November 3, 2003)

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All Shook up in Linux Land

Novell has signed an agreement to acquire SuSE Linux for $210 million in cash, while IBM, the most powerful backer of the Linux OS, will make a $50 million investment in Novell. It will be interesting to note what effect this has on the open-source community.

All Shook up in Linux Land (News.com, November 4, 2003)

Novell Committed to Linux (Matt Liotta's Blog, November 4, 2003)

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Tech and Tags

What's New at CFLib.org?

ArrayOfStructsToList: Returns a list of keys from a structure within an array. (CF Version: 5)
CountIt: Get a count on searching string in the searched string. (CF Version: 5)
forward: Performs a serverside redirection. (CF Version: MX)
isDefinedValueMX: Checks that a variable exists and has value. (CF Version: MX)
randomColorShade: Returns a random color of a specified shade, light, dark, extra light, extra dark, or any. (CF Version: 5)
EmailDomainLink: Formats an e-mail address so that its domain is a link to its web site. (CF Version: 5)
ListGetAtIncNulls: Get specific list element of list where empty strings are counted as elements. (CF Version: 5)
ListLenIncNulls: Length of list including empty elements. (CF Version: 5)
Sleep: Causes the current request to wait for a specified amount of time. (CF Version: MX)
ColumnLoop: Applies simple evaluations to every cell in a query column. (CF Version: 5)
MaxDate: Returns larger of 2 dates. (CF Version: 5)
MinDate: Returns smaller of 2 dates. (CF Version: 5)
unzipFile: Unzips a file to the specified directory. (CF Version: MX)
HTMLTrans: Converts the characters in a string to encoded special characters. (CF Version: 5)
IPConvert: Converts IPs to integers and back for efficient database storage. (CF Version: 5)
Is7bit: Determines whether a string is 7bit (CF Version: 5)
IsListInList: Checks if all elements of list X are found in list Y. (CF Version: 5)
IsViaSoap: Returns true if the curent request is SOAP based. (CF Version: MX)
IsXML: Checks to see if a string is valid XML. (CF Version: MX)

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Views

Project TrackNews: From Editor to Programmer

by Judith Dinowitz

For several years, I've been working with Michael on House of Fusion and Fusion Authority, and most people just assume that I do ColdFusion. In fact, people are genuinely puzzled when I explain to them that I've never coded a line of ColdFusion in my life! They don't understand that you can edit and write articles on a subject if you're a good writer or editor, and if you know enough of the technical lingo to communicate effectively.

Here I've got to give credit where credit is due. My main teacher in the tech arena is my husband, Michael Dinowitz, whose grasp of the structure of information, and of the ColdFusion language, is second to none. I know that Michael can answer any question I have about a technical aspect of an article I'm editing. And through the years, his discussions of ColdFusion and of programming in general have given me an education that most editors never get. But for all my experience on Fusion Authority, I was still sitting on the sidelines, observing, never having built an application for practical use.

That has changed. I am now embarking on a project -- my first ColdFusion application -- called Project TrackNews. This will be a news tracking application to keep tabs on every piece of news and every article that comes in to the magazine, and to assign the articles to an issue. I'm sure I could find a commercial or free application that would do the same thing, but I'm rather excited about the prospect of designing and building this myself. I'll be writing regular reports on the progress of the application and any problems I'm running into. The process should be very instructive -- for me, and perhaps for you too.

And who knows -- maybe in time I'll tackle Flash as well! But that's a project for another day ...

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Knowledge Base

ColdFusion MX: Calling Stored Procedures Which Return Reference Cursors in Oracle 8.1 and Higher

The syntax for calling stored procedures that return reference cursors in Oracle 8.1 and higher is different in ColdFusion MX than in previous versions. This may result in an error. The TechNote below will explain what to do about it.

ColdFusion MX: Calling Stored Procedures Which Return Reference Cursors in Oracle 8.1 and Higher

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ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for Using COM Objects

This new hot fix resolves the following issues with COM objects:

53224 - Child COM objects should not be released when the parent is released.
53243 - Empty string variables should not be passed as Nulls.
53283 - Optional arguments should be recognized correctly.
53114 - VT_INT arguments should be converted to VT_I4 integers.
If a null argument is passed to a COM object, it should be initialized VT_EMPTY.

You can download the hot fix at the URL below:

ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for Using COM Objects

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ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for CFINSERT/CFUPDATE

With ColdFusion MX 6.1, when CFINSERT or CFUPDATE is used with a table with certain column names, some form fields are not correctly mapped to the table column names. This happens intermittently. The following TechNote defines the problem and the solution:

ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for CFINSERT/CFUPDATE

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ColdFusion MX: Searching for Words with non-English Characters in Non-English Verity Collections Fail to Return Results

In ColdFusion MX and higher, when searching UTF-8 encoded documents for words containing non-English characters, the words are not found in the document. This is because Verity needs to see non-English characters encoded as either Western European or ISO-8859-1. The TechNote below will give you more information.

ColdFusion MX: Searching for Words with non-English Characters in Non-English Verity Collections Fail to Return Results

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ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for Data Source Connection Pooling

With Macromedia ColdFusion MX 6.1, if a data source is configured to maintain connections and the number of connections are limited (under Advanced Settings in the data source), it may cause the server to hang when trying to get a new connection, particularly if the server is under load. The TechNote below will explain why the problem occurs and what to do about it.

ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for Data Source Connection Pooling

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