CFUN-02

 
Jun 28, 2002
By Tobe Goldfinger and Judith Dinowitz

CFUN-02, which took place on June 15 and 16 at the Doubletree Hotel in Rockville, Maryland, was one of the best ColdFusion events we've ever attended. With its relaxed atmosphere, an assemblage of arguably some of the finest speakers on Macromedia technology today, and a nifty price tag (less than $200 for two full days), who wouldn't want to go? Focusing heavily on the newly-released CFMX, the conference provided an abundance of topics, suitable for CF developers across all skill levels. And of course there was plenty of time to network and party at night and between sessions!

Saturday, June 15

Michael Smith opened the conference with a warm welcome. He was followed by Adam Churvis of Productivity Enhancements, who spoke about "Leveraging the New MX Functions and Components in Your Applications." Adam began with an introduction to CFMX-style functions using the new CFFUNCTION tag. Then he went on to logically group the new style functions into CFCs (ColdFusion Components) He reviewed the many ways CFCs can be invoked, and showed the beginnings of a proposed architecture to put all database interaction into CFCs.

Reminding us that we still have to work in the real world where CFMX is not (for most people) the production version in use, Steve Drucker, of Figleaf, Inc., highlighted issues and solutions in the areas of "Printing, Reporting and Graphing." This is a subset of a Figleaf course, Printing, Reporting and Graphing Through the Web.

Steve showed us some tricks, both server-side and client side, for forcing page breaks, using an example that generates a batch of invoices. When cross-browser issues make using advanced CSS not an option, he discussed several techniques for using add-on products (like Microsoft Word and ActivePDF) to solve the same problems.He also briefly covered a variety of techniques, ranging from simple HTML, CF tags and third-party products to generate graphs.

Ben Elmore of RemoteSite Technologies, Inc. made a compelling business case for "Unlocking the Power of Java in CFMX." He argued that many projects are predominantly straightforward web applications, often containing only a small percentage of difficult features. In the past, it's been difficult to build a stable and robust solution using a hybrid of languages. CFMX now makes a CF/Java combination both an easy and reasonable solution.

He discussed invoking Java classes out of CF code to do complex tasks like talking to sockets or JMS (Java Messaging Server). For projects that have good reason to be coded in both ColdFusion and Java servlets/JSPs, he highlighted techniques for sharing memory scope and passing control back and forth.

Time for a break with Celebrity CF Jeopardy!, starring Raymond Camden, Charlie Arehart and Ben Elmore, with Sandra Clark at the controls and Michael Smith Emceeing. It was a welcome bit of comic relief and the category Wacky Error Messages (such as "waitpid() returned something nasty") got the most howls, precisely because the panelists claimed that they only write good code and therefore had no reason to have knowledge of these obscure error messages.

Kevin Towes, CTO of Pangaea NewMedia, showed us his "Flash MX and ColdFusion -- Advanced Techniques." He demoed several examples of the kind of new "rich interface" application Macromedia is promoting. He started with a pizza finder application that used animated drilldown maps and went on to a parks drilldown example done in both regular HTML and a Flash front-end and using the same CFC backend. He shared with us how not to be intimidated by the Flash development environment, teaching us the use of Stop in our single frame screens and recommending a separate layer for ActionScript.

Raymond Camden, Jedimaster of Macromedia, Inc., discussed "Security in CFMX". Security basically boils down to authentication (are you who you say you are) and authorization (what functions can you perform). Now that CFMX no longer includes SiteMinder's advanced security, there are several new tags and functions to simplify implementing security, including CFLogin, CFLoginuser and IsUserInRole. Using programming techniques similar to what many of us have been doing all along with "roll your own" security, Raymond explained how to use all of the new tags and functions. One of the clear advantages to placing people in roles that ColdFusion understands is the close integration with authorization features built in for controlling functions and CFCs.

The last of the Saturday speakers (but not the least) was Hal Helms, who presented on "Implementing Model-View-Controller with Fusebox." Hal's opening, the story of the developer whose small application became so complex that managing it sent him to Programmer's heaven, provided a nice humorous touch. Hal explained MVC (the history of it and why it continues, after all these years, to be a popular paradigm). Then Hal introduced us to Fusebox 3, and he showed an example of how he could implement an MVC solution using Fusebox 3 architecture.

Sunday, June 16

The day began with Shlomy Gantz of Bluebrick, who dished out "Project Management for the MX Generation." With much humor and audience participation, he discussed classic project management mistakes, some of the horror stories for projects he was brought in to clean up, as well as suggestions for leading successful projects.

Michael Dinowitz, President of House of Fusion, Inc., then gave us "Regular Expression Power Tips." This was an introduction to Regular Expressions from the ground up, with successfully more and more complex examples, including some of the hot new MX features. Michael has a real knack for making this sometimes-obscure topic accessible to the average programmer.

The next speaker was Robi Sen, President of Department 13, on the topic of "Web Services and CF." Robi has a long history at CF events talking about EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), XML and building federated applications. He reminded us that Web Services is an emerging and changing topic, and that Macromedia has done a good job of trying to grab a moving target and turn it into something usable and accessible to the average developer. He explained about the emerging recommendations/standards for SOAP and WSDL, and was able to review with us both the pros and cons for CFC-based Web Services.

Sandra Clark of Shayna Productions presented an intense, thoroughly documented review of issues to consider when "Migrating from CF 5 to CFMX." ColdFusion may look the same, but under the covers, it's using Java libraries, which may exhibit slightly different behavior than your code would be expecting. She explained about the CF code compatibility analyzer offered by Macromedia and emphasized the benefits of a structured migration plan. She went on to highlight areas where the changes in ColdFusion may very well break something in your application, as well as other areas where the changes are more subtle and may just require review and serious testing.

Charlie Arehart of Systemanage.com, often in demand for his "CFMX Hidden Gems" presentation, regaled everybody with a thorough review of many of the benefits and features of CFMX beyond the large topics ordinarily discussed. He provided a wealth of resources for further review, and certainly helped us think twice about the possibilities offered by the new, powerful, CFMX.

One of the funniest moments of the day came at the end, when Ben Forta arrived. Ben looked quite shocked when a group of CF women, headed by Sandra Clark, staged an elaborate practical joke by rushing the stage, and, after being told to sit down, sitting on the front of the stage and staring at Ben like groupies. The joke was taken in good humor by Ben and by the audience, and the conference resumed without incident. This was just one example of the relaxed and rather insane atmosphere that characterized CFUN-02.

Ben didn't do his XML presentation, and instead did a Q&A session with Michael Dinowitz, Charlie Arehart and Ray Camden. The level of crowd participation was very high, so the discussion was solid, informative and thought-provoking.

Besides the great ideas that were flying all weekend, there were plenty of goodies to be found in the exhibit area. Several of the sponsors had their own tables or literature distributed at the conference (TeraTech, MDCFUG, Macromedia, e-zonemedia (Fusetalk), Byte Back, CPCUG, Fusion Authority, OpenDemand, PaperThin and Webedge Hosting.). Some sponsors made their presence known with giveaways, such as ColdFusion Developer's Journal (who provided a free magazine to every attendee), and several publishers who sent lots of books to raffle (Synthis, New Atlanta, O'Reily, Glasshaus Press, Que, Osbourne/McGraw Hill, New Riders, and Sybex.) The sponsors' support was appreciated. Fusion Authority published a 33-page Summer Special that was distributed in the Exhibit Hall, with excellent reaction.

CFUN-02 provided a carefree environment to absorb a lot of CF knowledge and network with people who are involved in ColdFusion -- A fine continuation of the annual CFUN tradition started in the summer of 1999 by Michael Smith and TeraTech.

For more information about this conference, visit http://www.cfconf.org/cfun-02/. To see photos of the conference, visit http://www.cfconf.org/cfun-02/pix/index.cfm.


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